



Class . 
Book_ 



WHENCE COMETH 
VICTORY? 



BY 
MARY BRABSON LITTLETON 



* 



SECOND EDITION 



JOHN MURPHY COMPANY 

PRINTERS 
Baltimore, Maryland. 



WHENCE COMETH 
VICTORY? 9/f 



)l 



0* 



BY 
MARY BRABSON LITTLETON 



SECOND EDITION 



■ 



Copyright, 1918, By 
MARY BRABSON LITTLETON 



©CI.A5L5682 

Press op John Murphy Company. Baltimore, Maryland 

MAY 23 1919 



IN DEDICATION TO MY SON, 

AUGUSTINE BRABSON LITTLETON, 

VOLUNTEER— SOLDIER— MARTYR 

He did me the honor to lay down his life for my 
country; he crowned me with the imperishable glory 
of being the mother of a patriot. 

He was a brilliant lawyer, a gifted speaker, a suc- 
cessful business man; he turned away from the allur- 
ing vision of fame in his chosen profession; from a 
blissful home and loyal friendships to answer the call 
sublime of his country. He voluntarily offered all he 
had, and died without a seeming regret in the great 
war for liberty, for justice, for humanity. 



Whence Cometh Victory? 

War and only war is of interest at the present 
moment. Current literature is as fearfully interest- 
ing and as ephemeral as the flashing of a musket or 
the roar of cannon. Romance is colorful of carnage 
and poetry breathes the martial exhaltation of most 
noble patriotism. War in every act of the govern- 
ment, in every intent of the nation in work and 
prayer, in hope and fear, all minds and men and 
measures have concentrated upon war and converge 
to one end — National Victory. 

Kipling's message to the world is that "Nothing 
else under heaven matters today except that the war 
shall go on to victory," and it expresses the thought 
and intent of the Allies. Not only this war, but all 
wars of past ages have a value and bearing upon the 
present time, so I make no apology for turning from 
the reportorial field of history in the making, to his- 
tory already made, to those tremendous and com- 
pleted events which, like pyramids in the sands of 
time, hold the secrets of their defeat or victory in 
their sphinx-like silence. Let no man think that be- 
cause the weapons of war have been changed in the 
progress of the ages that war is any different now 
from what it has always been. Comte wrote "We 
who live are governed by the past," and another, 
"There is not a single personal, social or political, or 
any question of the day that does not run back and 



6 WHENCE COMETH VICTOEY? 

root itself in antiquity." "Ancient history/' says 
Kawlinson, "is a vital part of modern history. The 
present is only the past in a less developed form. 
Divisions between ancient and modern history are 
purely arbitrary." 

And so, meaning to do "my bit," I have made a 
study of the great wars of history; not a difficult 
task, for civilization has been mightily concerned 
with war and historians have made it all and all 
their care; books are multiplied on the subject and 
libraries have brought their spoils from afar. The 
subject is as vast as it is fearfully interesting, but I 
have not set out to study the science of war; that is 
too well understood by all the nations and their 
rulers of today. I have decided to study victory, to 
seek out the mysterious abiding place of that shining 
vision for whose favor men give their lives and women 
their all of life and love and happiness. 

I have asked of victory, whence cometh thou? or 
what are thy ways, and hast thou laws like unto 
science? Is thy nature miraculous, like the raising 
of the dead to life by Divine fiat? Or wilt thou 
obey classified rules, and yield to man's understand- 
ing as nature yields bountiful crops to a knowledge 
of agriculture, or wealth follows the science of 
finance, as salvation comes by the doctrines of Chris- 
tianity ? The decisive battles of the world have been 
of tremendous import, many of them influencing civi- 
lization for a thousand and even more years. Events 
so far reaching and important must in the course of 



WHENCE COMETH VICTOKY? 7 

ages have evolved certain and concurrent testimony 
as to the cause or principle or law of military vic- 
tory. Arbela and Hastings and Orleans are not iso- 
lated accidents, they belong to a chain of events, have 
a likeness and unity of purpose and testify to a 
superintendence above and beyond the power of hu- 
man calculation. 

Is Military Victory a question of numerical 
strength, a test of man power? Let Greece answer, 
who at the battle of Marathon, with a force of eleven 
thousand infantry, defeated the invading hosts of 
Persia, the then mightiest empire of the world, whose 
armies bore down upon Miltiades in countless num- 
bers, with a prestige of racial superiority and the 
widely advertised record of having shattered and en- 
slaved for fifty years all the kingdoms and princi- 
palities of the known world. If numerical strength 
alone counted, where wuold we be, who owe our in» 
dependence in the wars against England to 

"The old Continentals, 
In their ragged regimentals, 
Yielding not." 

Let us not forget that in the present war Russia 
had fourteen million men under arms and Germany 
ten million. 

Has supreme military genius always counted for 
surety of victory? I think not, else had Napoleon 
not been defeated at Waterloo. Neither is the right- 
eousness of a nation's cause sure and certain promise 



8 WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 

of victory. All military experts agree that the cru- 
sades were a dismal military failure, yet if ever wars 
were justified by the holiness of their cause, surely 
the crusades can claim that honor. Does the magic 
secret lie like a hidden god in preparedness? Look 
long and earnestly at the Spanish Armada, to whose 
equipment Spain, the then dominant nation of the 
world, gave of her genius and vast resources in un- 
stinted measure. Yet Lord Charles Howard, high 
admiral to a woman ruler, whose commands he was 
compelled to disobey in order to win, with barely 
thirty-six ships in the royal navy, and a manifest 
deficiency of ammunition, defeated and dismantled 
the shining example of preparedness, so that his- 
torians write "Of their whole Armada only fifty- 
three shattered vessels brought back their beaten 
and wasted crews to the Spanish port which they 
had quitted in such pageantry and pride." 

Charles Martel, at the Battle of Tours would, 
seem to vindicate defensive warfare. Surely, there 
is much in the energy of necessity to establish de- 
fensive warfare as the heir at law to military vic- 
tory. At Tours a young leader with but few fol- 
lowers defied and defeated the hitherto victorious 
hosts of Islam, "Rescuing our ancestors of Britain 
and our neighbors of Gaul from the civil and re- 
ligious yoke of the Koran." Yet, no sooner are we 
committed to defensive warfare as entitled to mili- 
tary success, than we are reminded that Alexander 
the Great is the very type of offensive warfare, and 



WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 9 

a synonym for conquest, and looking further down 
the line of events, we realize that the Battle of Hast- 
ings, which determined the history of England for a 
thousand years, was won by an army of invasion 
under the banners of a foreigner. 

Creasy has a gleeful account of how Alexander the 
Great insisted that his troops should rest and sleep 
well the night before the Battle of Arbela, so that 
they came upon the host of Darius in the morning 
rested and refreshed. Yet Josephus relates that the 
night before the battle of the Amalekites, the Hebrew 
army did not sleep at all, and that Moses, the com- 
mander-in-chief of the armies, was awake the whole 
night long laying his plans and instructing his offi- 
cers. 

Some men attribute military victory to fatalism, 
but fatalism, if relied upon as a living principle of 
civilization, would long since have disbanded armies, 
discredited war and discouraged all human effort. 

While it is diverting to read military critics as to 
why this General succeeded and that one failed, their 
conclusions point to victory as too capricious, too 
much of the nature of chance or accident, and con- 
tribute but little to what I have set out to find — the 
law of victory. 

Decisive battles, apparent as their results and 
causes seem to be, are not sufficiently clear and re- 
sounding as to establish a principle of victory. There- 
fore, I have concentrated my investigation upon great 
commanders, those world characters who have per- 



10 WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 

sonally participated in the mighty conflicts, who have 
realized their powers and accepted their limitations ; 
and I have found that, however much they value pre- 
paredness, and all that the word implies, they one 
and all testify by word and deed to a force in mili- 
tary victory independent of human calculation; a 
power over and beyond the might of embattled ar- 
mies, a judgment coercive of man's, independent, ab- 
solute, final. 

Hitherto the testimony of the great military con- 
querors of the world to the intervention of omnipo- 
tence in battle has not been realized in its cumulative 
force, it has been treated as an individual, miracu- 
lous favor, rather than as the great, splendid natural 
law of victory. 

The world characters whom I have cited in proof 
of this natural law of victory lived centuries apart 
and under widely divergent conditions. They were 
not necessarily good men, some of them were, to 
heroic sanctity, some were not, most of them were 
not guiltless of the crimes of great ambitions ; "The 
litany of private virtues, modesty, humility, philan- 
thropy and forbearance, must not be raised against 
them," but they were strong men, cast in the mould 
of conquerors; they were the determinative forces in 
civilization, the great empire-builders of the world. 

If there ever was a time when men had need of the 
wisdom of the ancients, it is surely now, when death 
and desolation ride the blast, and no one knows what 
one day will bring forth. Civil rulers predict a long 



WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 11 

war. Why not? England had her hundred years 
of war; Germany fought for thirty years, until her 
people were all but exterminated. The war passion 
aroused by the German propaganda obeys no law of 
humanity and yields to no moral suasion. Money, 
and more money, men, and more men, munitions, and 
more munitions, are called for and will be called 
for until the mind is staggered and appalled at the 
awful calamity. I believe it was Kitchener who 
prophesied that this was to be a war of attrition. 
There is no man among the ancients whose career is 
so fraught with instruction as that of Moses, and 
no history so illustrative of the solemn judgments of 
God as that of the Hebrews, who for fifteen hundred 
years revealed as in a mirror the presence and power 
of God in civil government. 

It is not the purpose of this paper to call attention 
to the legislative acts of Moses, to the fact that in 
the Ten Commandments he has given to civilization 
the foundation principles of all law, jurisprudence 
and government. Neither will I refer to the stupen- 
dous miracles which attested to the religiousness of 
his character. My reference is rather to the victori- 
ous wars which he waged during a period of forty 
years against nations so vastly superior to him in 
numbers and equipment as to challenge investigation 
of his methods. He seems to have found the very 
principle of military victory and relied upon it as a 
science. The principle of victory so practically ap- 
plied by the great lawgiver was faith in prayer, un- 



12 WHENCE COMETH VICTOEY? 

ceasing supplication to heaven for the arbitrament 
of God in the affairs of earth. 

Prayer was to Moses as chariots and horsemen to 
Pharaoh ; he handled prayer with skill and accuracy 
as a general handles his disciplined armies. By 
prayer he delivered his people from oppression with- 
out the loss of a single man. By prayer he quelled 
civil rebellions, and by prayer prevailed on God to 
spare the lives of the rebels. By prayer he con- 
quered powerful nations, and slew in battle thirty- 
one kings. The Bible records three different occa- 
sions when he fasted and prayed forty days and forty 
nights, thus plainly revealing the source of his power 
and unvarying victories, legislative, military and ad- 
ministrative. 

To Joshua, his successor, he bequeathed as his most 
valuable inheritance such a living faith in prayer 
that that mighty man of war could say, "Move not, 
O sun, toward Gabaon, nor thou, O moon, to the Val- 
ley of Ajalon." Is not this written in the Book of 
the just? "There was not before or since so long a 
day, the Lord obeying the voice of man and fighting 
for Israel." 

Moses is not so remote, nor so far removed in sanc- 
tity from the arena of human effort as to be of no 
council value in the present crisis. Napoleon studied 
and profited, he says, by the campaign of Alexander 
the Great. Why not Moses as our instructor, since 
he is the founder of our civilization? It must be 
remembered that, even outside the wonderful Bibli- 



WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 13 

cal record of Moses, he is a shining figure in the 
annals of profane history, ranking with the most 
brilliant statesmen and generals of antiquity. Ra- 
binnical literature teems with legends of the great 
civilizer vouching for the reality of a grand and illus- 
trious person of strong character, high purpose and 
noble achievement, so deep, thorough and efficient 
in his religious convictions as to thrill and subdue 
the minds of an entire race for centuries after his 
death." 

Josephus has a fascinating account of Moses in the 
Palace of Pharaoh, where he was educated for and 
treated as heir to the throne, agreeing with St. 
Stephen, who says : "Moses was instructed in all the 
wisdom of the Egyptians and was mighty in his 
words and in his deeds." Josephus paints a spir- 
ited picture of him as the commander-in-chief of the 
Egyptian army in that campaign against the Ethio- 
pians, which "Was a war of that consequence as to 
occasion the destruction of six or seven nations of 
the posterity of Mitzrain, with their cities.'' The 
holy wars of Moses, though undertaken at the com- 
mand of God and in the nature of legal executions 
against nations that had been condemned centuries 
before for unspeakable degeneration, crimes against 
the laws of nature and civilization, were, neverthe- 
less, difficult of achievement. These nations were 
devil worshipers. Their kings, as a rule, were de- 
moniacs, aided by the guile and subtlety of the pow- 
ers of hell ; nor were they inconsequential as to mili- 



14 WHENCE COMETH VICTOEY? 

tary strength. Joshua gives the number of Canaan- 
ites slain in one battle as twenty-five thousand, and 
Josephus gives the army of one of their kings as 
"Three hundred thousand armed footmen and ten 
thousand horsemen, and twenty thousand chariots." 
Moreover, when the Canaanites heard that the He- 
brews had come out of Egypt to destroy them, they 
were busy all the time in making their city strong. 
The testimony of Moses to the value and necessity 
of prayer for military victory is definite and sure. 
Josephus thus sums up the wisdom of the ruler who 
delivered to his people the natural laws of military 
victory, national prosperity, long life and domestic 
happiness. "Oh, children of Israel, there is but one 
source of happiness to all mankind, the favor of 
God." 

The favor of God is something different from His 
Divine Providence, by which He maketh the rain to 
fall on the just and the unjust. It is different, too, 
from Divine justice, "Before which the inhabitants 
of the earth are repulsed as nothing before Him. For 
He doth according to his will as well as with the 
powers of Heaven as among the inhabitants of the 
earth; and there is none that can resist His hand 
and say to Him, 'Why hast thou done it?' " It is not 
the mercy of God, nor yet His love, nor is it His 
wisdom, nor exactly His goodness. It is what the 
Word intends, the favor of God. Now the favor of 
an earthly monarch is a gracious and happy thing 
for the favorite; how much more, then, the favor of 



WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 15 

the omnipotent Ruler of the universe? The life and 
deeds of Moses illustrate one overmastering con- 
viction that he believed military victory came to a 
people by favor of God, and that this favor could be 
influenced by human endeavor, that prayer was the 
appointed way of reaching the audience chamber of 
the Most High and winning, not as a right, not as 
due to one's virtues or to one's efforts, but as a fa- 
vor, military victory. The message, then, of Moses 
to the warring nations of the present day is this: 
"Eternal vigilance of prayer is the price of victory." 

ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 

I have said that Napoleon Bonaparte studied the 
campaigns of Alexander the Great. Did he observe 
that, like Moses and all other finally victorious gen- 
erals, Alexander placed his confidence in a power 
above that of his armies and generals, and, though a 
Pagan, offered sacrifice and prayer to the true God 
for the success of his undertaking in the Temple of 
Solomon at Jerusalem? The incident related by 
Josephus is so interesting and instructive that I 
quote it here. When Alexander the Great had come 
into the land of the Hebrews he sent a message to 
the high priest ordering him to send men and pro- 
visions for his army and to pay him the tribute for- 
merly paid to Darius. This the high priest refused 
to do, because of his treaty with Darius, and that the 
Jews were always exact and scrupulous in carrying 
out their international contracts. Thereupon Alex- 



16 WHENCE COMETH VICTOKY? 

ander became very angry, and when he marched to 
the Gates of Jerusalem his followers were surprised 
that, instead of destroying the city, he received the 
high priest with great respect. 

"Whereupon the King of Syria and the rest were 
surprised at what Alexander had done and supposed 
him disordered in his mind. However, Parmenio 
(his general) alone went up to him and asked him 
how came it to pass that when all others adored him, 
he should adore the high priest of the Jews, to whom 
he replied : 'I did not adore him, but that God who 
hath honored him with the high priesthood, for I 
saw this very person in a dream in this very habit, 
when I was at Bias, in Macedonia, who, when I was 
considering myself how I might obtain the dominion 
of Asia, exhorted me to make no delay, but boldly 
to pass over the sea hither, for that he would con- 
duct my army and would give me the dominion over 
the Persians ; whence it is that, having seen no other 
in that habit, and now seeing this person in it, and 
remembering that vision and the exhortation which I 
had in my dream, I believe that I bring this army 
under the Divine conduct, and shall therewith con- 
quer Darius and destroy the power of the Persians, 
and that all things will succeed according to what is 
in my own mind.' And when he had said this to 
Parmenio and had given his right hand to the high 
priest, the priest ran along by him and he came into 
the city. And when he went up into the temple he 
offered sacrifice to God and magnificently treated 



WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 17 

both the high priest and the priests. And when the 
Book of Daniel was showed to him, wherein Daniel 
declared that one of the Greeks should destroy the 
empire of the Persians, he supposed that himself was 
the person intended. He was then glad and he bid 
them ask what favors they pleased of them, and he 
granted all they desired." 

DAVID. 

If you would find men of religious indifference, 
irreverant of God and his priests, seek for them 
among the, scrap-heaps of mediocrity. Civil rulers of 
commanding power and prestige realize in themselves 
a shadow of the omnipotent Ruler of the universe. 
They feel His presence and are not jealous of His 
authority; neither are they guilty of that graft of 
credit due to God of which pigmy creatures are so 
often guilty. 

David, the most famous figure in Hebrew legend 
and history after Moses, brave beautiful, brilliant, 
all-conquering as a military leader, immortal in lit- 
erature, was a man "After God's own heart," so 
filled with the spirit of prayer that he seemed to pray 
always. He preserved throughout his entire reign 
the youth of his spirit. "And David said to the 
Phillistine: 'Thou comest to me with a sword and 
with a spear, and with a shield, but I come to thee in 
the name of the Lord of Hosts, the God of the Army 
of Israel.'" No other civil ruler was left such a 
record of prayer as David in his One Hundred and 



18 WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 

Fifty Psalms. Therein is every form of prayer, the 
prayer of appeal for aid, of thanksgiving, of praise, 
of repentance, of gratitude for forgiveness, the prayer 
of reparation, canticles of victory and of child-like 
love and confidence. 

It may strain the faith of moderns to follow Moses 
to his heights of isolated grandeur; we may not be 
able to stand with him upon the shores of the Red 
Sea, where he matched his battle prayer for victory 
against the hosts of Egypt. None knew better than 
he the deadly prowess of Pharaoh's armies; had he 
not been their commander-in-chief when they de- 
stroyed seven Ethiopian nations? But David, the 
shepherd lad, risen from the people, elected to be the 
head of a young commonwealth, he is of our own 
times. He and Charlemagne are akin in their cour- 
age, the vigor of their faith, their reliance on prayer, 
but especially in their passionate gratitude to God 
for their never-failing victories. Charlemagne, "the 
most majestic figure in the history of a thousand 
years, of whom Bryce says "He was all great men in 
one," so valued prayer and men of prayer that he 
sought out men of the religious orders and invited 
them into his kingdom and appointed as his minister 
and chief of education Alcuin, the most eminent the- 
ologian of the century, that education might be in- 
formed by the spirit of Divine as well as scientific 
minds. As David was amenable to the advice and 
correction of the high priest Nathan, so did Charle- 
magne respect and magnificently treat the ministers 



WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 19 

of religion. It is written that he made long and 
frequent journeys to Rome to consult with the Pope, 
whose favor he valued as the very blessing of God. 
He confirmed to the papacy, as he thought forever, 
the estates of the church bestowed by his father, 
Pepin, and held them to be as sacred to God and the 
spiritual business concerns of the church as was the 
territory on which stood the Temple of Solomon. 
Throughout his entire reign he defended the tem- 
poralities of the papacy. 

Like the sweet singer of Israel, Charlemagne was 
a musician and a founder of colleges of sacred music. 
It might be said of him, as of David, "And he set 
singers before the altar, and by their voices he made 
sweet melody, and to the festivals he added beauty 
and set in order the solemn times even unto the end 
of his life, that they should praise the holy name of 
the Lord and magnify the holiness of God in the 
morning." 

ESTHER. 

God's intervention in the affairs of civil govern- 
ment seems more apparent when some victory has 
been won through a woman rather than through a 
man of commanding genius. Upon the page of his- 
tory there is a story of enduring interest, of spiritual 
beauty and charm and power, fair as romance, re- 
freshing as truth. 

Within the mighty empire of the Medes and Per- 
sians there lived two favorites of the King Cyrus, 



20 WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 

called by the Greeks Artaxerxes. One of those fa- 
vorites was Haman, the Amalekite, hereditary enemy 
of the Jews, and the other was Queen Esther, wife 
of the King. Between these two, Haman and Esther, 
was fought a diplomatic battle as fierce and terrible 
and as far-reaching as any ever staged on the arena 
of military conflict. For a time Haman had the as- 
cendency over the King and prevailed on him to sign 
a decree and have it dispatched throughout all of the 
provinces of the empire "To kill and destroy all the 
Jews, both young and old, little children and women, 
in one day, and to make a spoil of their goods." 

When Esther, the Jewish Queen, heard of this 
monstrous edict to murder all her people, she was in 
consternation and sent to her uncle, Mordecai, these 
words: "Go and gather together all the Jews whom 
ye shall find in Susan and pray ye for me. Neither 
eat nor drink for three days and nights ; and I, with 
my handmaids, will fast in like manner, and then I 
will go into the King against the law, not being 
called, and expose myself to death and to danger." 
It would seem that at this time, possibly through the 
machinations of Haman, that Esther was not in im- 
mediate favor. Her words are: "How can I go to 
the King, who for these thirty days now have not 
been called unto him." None understood the fearful 
import of a royal decree better than Esther, her own 
words are: "Whomsoever whether a man or woman 
cometh in the King's inner court who is not called 
for, is immediately put to death without delay." 



WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 21 

Men with axes in their hands, says Josephus, stood 
around about the throne of the King, ready to punish 
such as approached him without being called. The 
law of the Medes and Persians was that, whatever 
decree had been signed by the King and his nobles, 
could not be changed and remained unalterable. The 
task of Esther was not an easy one ; for a less offense 
Vashti had been dethroned and destroyed. The 
prayer of Esther for God's aid in her hazardous un- 
dertaking is sublime in its simple faith and pathos. 
All historians record that she won the favor of God, 
that he clothed her with beauty and with the wisdom 
of diplomacy, that she gloriously triumphed over 
Haman and all her enemies, that she not only had 
the decree against her countrymen reversed, but that 
she procured for them the high places of trust and 
emolument throughout the empire and had her uncle, 
Mordicai, raised to the place of second in command, 
next to the King. 

If, by prayer, Esther could prevail on God to re- 
verse the immutable decrees of the Medes and Per- 
sians, might not the women of the United States, 
organized for prayer for victory, so win upon the 
favor of the Great Ruler as to influence his decision 

in this war? 

JUDITH. 

Judith whose story gleams like a cluster of orien- 
tal jewels upon the page of history, delivered her 
people from the menace of Assyrian despotism by 
prayer. 



22 WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 

Like the German Emperor, the King of the Assyr- 
ians, who reigned in Ninevah, the great city, called 
"All the ancients and the governors, and his officers 
of war, and communicated with them the secret of 
his council, and he said (as the Kaiser has said) that 
his thoughts were to bring all the earth under his 
empire." To this end, he made vast preparations 
and sent a mighty army, under Holofernes, to attack 
and devour all the nations and their cities. Such 
was the terror inspired by the unspeakable atroci- 
ties of the Assyrian that, after half the world had 
been subdued, the remaining cities and nations came 
out to meet the Assyrians and offered to make peace 
on any terms whatsoever. Which terms, when agreed 
to and imposed by Holofernes, were treated as scraps 
of paper, "For all that they could not mitigate the 
fierceness of the heart of Holofernes, for he both de- 
stroyed their cities and cut down their groves." 
Deadley as the simoon, implacable as fate, the all- 
conquering army advanced to the gates of Jerusa- 
lem and demanded the surrender of the city and of 
the temple. Dread and horror seized upon the minds 
of the people of Israel; they gave themselves to 
fasting and prayer, calling to mind Moses, "The 
servant of the Lord who overcame Amalec, that 
trusted in his own strength and in his power and in 
his army, and in his shield, and in his chariots, and 
in his horsemen, not by fighting with the sword, but 
by holy prayers." The delay of the people of Israel 
in surrendering to him so transported Holofernes 



WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 23 

with fury and indignation that from his horrible 
threats there seemed no hope whatever of escape, 
and the people began to upbraid their rulers for not 
"talking peaceably with the Germans, I mean the 
Assyrians, and resolved of their own accord to yield 
themselves up to Holofernes. Then arose in their 
midst a woman of glorious beauty and renowned for 
her piety, who spent all her days in fasting and 
prayer. Arousing all the people to renewed faith and 
prayer, she pledged them to pray for her, and herself 
prayed for three days and nights in sackcloth and 
ashes. Then, strong in the favor of God, she, single- 
handed and alone, challenged the further conquests 
of the Assyrians, overthrew and slew their hitherto 
invincible general, Holofernes, and delivered his ar- 
mies to the victorious sword of Israel, thus putting 
an end to a war as brutal, senseless and wicked as 
the present German war. 

There is not in all literature anything finer than 
the Canticle of Judith, soaring with the spirit of 
victory, radiant with gratitude, an accurate and de- 
tailed report, this poem, with the spiritual insight 
of a woman, reveals the beneficent purpose of God's 
intervention in war: 

"The Lord putteth an end to wars, 
The Lord is his name." 

NINEVEH. 

Nineveh, the great pagan city, offers an illuminat- 
ing historic incident of answered prayer for national 
defense. 



24 WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 

Josephus relates that a time when Babylon threat- 
ened the destruction of Nineveh, the prophet Jonah 
was sent to warn them of the impending and imme- 
diate disaster. 

Though these people were Pagans, whose wicked- 
ness had "come up before the Lord," they had been 
observers, through many centuries, of the power and 
willingness of the God of Israel to answer prayer. 

There is nothing more accurately historical than 
the Book of Jonas : 

"Now Nineveh was a great city of three days' jour- 
ney, and Jonas began to enter into the city one day's 
journey; and he cried and said: yet forty days and 
Nineveh shall be destroyed. * * * And the men of 
Nineveh proclaimed a fast and put on sackcloth and 
ashes from the greatest to the least. And the word 
came to the King of Nineveh; and he rose up out of 
his throne and cast away his robe from him and was 
clothed with sackcloth and sat in ashes. And he 
caused it to be proclaimed and published in Nineveh 
from the mouth of the King and of all his Princes : 
Let neither men nor beasts, oxen or sheep, taste any- 
thing. Let them not feed nor taste water. And let 
men and beasts be covered with sackcloth, and cry 
to the Lord with all their strength, and let them turn 
everyone from his evil ways and the iniquity that is 
in their hands. Who can tell if God will turn and 
forgive, and will turn away from his fierce anger 
and we shall not perish. * » * And God saw 
their works, that they were turned from their evil 



WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 25 

ways. And God had mercy with regard to the evil 
which He had said He would do to them, and He did 
it not. * * * And Jonas was exceedingly angry." 

Jonas was concerned lest he should pass for a 
false prophet, or rather lest God's word by this occa- 
sion might come to be slighted and disbelieved. His 
prayer is one of the sweetest and most humanely 
frank and affectionate in the Bible : 

"And he prayed to the Lord and said: I beseech 
Thee, O Lord, is this not what I said when I was in 
my own country? Therefore, I went before to flee 
into Tharsis; for I know that Thou art a gracious 
and merciful God, patient, and of much compassion 
and easy to forgive." 

SENNACHARIB. 

The entire history of the Jews reveals their reli- 
ance upon the dynamic value of prayer to force a 
quick decision in war and to conserve the lives of 
their fighting men. The conservation of life was one 
of their national responsibilities, and one of their 
chief motives for their battle prayers for victory. 
In many of their battles not a single Hebrew soldier 
lost his life. 

The laws of Moses relating to war make no men- 
tion whatever of the organization or training of 
armies, though he had an army of six hundred thou- 
sand men. These laws relating to war are chiefly 
concerned in arousing the armies to faith in prayer, 
and are largely prohibitions against atrocities such 



26 WHENCE COMETH VICTOEY? 

as the Assyrians and modern Germans perpetrated, 
which, if allowed to the Jews, would have brought 
down upon them the certain and tremendous judg- 
ments of God so frequently visited upon the heathens 
contemporary with the Jews. 

"Judas, called Maccabeus, who in his acts was like 
a lion, and like a lion's whelp roaring for his prey, 
who grieved many kings and was renowned even to 
the uttermost ends of the earth" — thus sums up the 
military faith of the ancient people of God : 

"There is no difference in the sight of heaven to 
deliver with a great multitude or a small company, 
for the success of war is not in the multitude of the 
army, but strength cometh from heaven." 

The Germans seem to be obsessed with a strange 
illusion, a sort of national insanity, that they are a 
reincarnation of ancient Israel, and they assume to 
themselves prophecies which were fulfilled and fin- 
ished four thousand years ago. 

"Brethren and sisters! in a moment we * * 
have become the heirs of Israel, the people of the 
Old Testament covenant. We shall be the bearers of 
God's promises." — Pastor J. Rump. 

"As was Israel among the heathen, so is Germany 
among the nations." — Pastor Tolzien. 

"The German soul is God's soul ; it shall and will 
rule over mankind." — Pastor W. Lehman. 

"I am not in the least afraid. The good God will 
help us, for He is German." — Kurt Englebrecht. 



WHENCE COMETH VICTOKY? 27 

"God has in Luther practically chosen the German 
people." — Dr. Preuss. 

"He who does not believe in the Divine mission of 
Germany had better hang himself, and rather today 
than tomorrow." — H. S. Chamberlain. 

"There is a gospel-saying * * * which we 
may well take as the consecration of our German 
mission : 'Ye are the salt of the earth ! ye are the light 
of the world!" — Prof. Adolf Deismann. 

"It was given and assigned to us, and we read in 
it the original text of our destiny, which proclaims 
to mankind salvation or disaster, according as we 
will it." — Pastor J. Rump. 

The German Emperor, in his capacity of spiritual 
head of the German church, has made a profession 
of prophecy and stages himself for prophetic utter- 
ances after the manner of an ancient Hebrew patri- 
arch. That our enemies should harken back to dead 
empires and dead epochs to find their similitude is 
not strange, since they are out of touch with modern 
spiritual ideals, but that they should see in them- 
selves Israelites without guile is evidence of their 
superficial knowledge of Hebrew history. They are 
like Balack, the King of the Moabites, who, seeing 
"How great the Israelites had grown, was affrighted 
for his kingdom. He was not acquainted with this, 
that the Hebrews would not meddle with any other 
country, but were to remain contented with the land 
of Canaan, God having forbidden them to go any 



28 WHENCE COMETH VICTOKY? 

further * * * But that these countries given by 
God were their peculiar portion among the nations, 
and that all who endeavored to dispossess them 
might ever be justly destroyed." 

Of all the nations of antiquity, the Jews were the 
least ambitious for world dominion. The mission 
of the Jews was to the Messiah; from Adam, who 
foretold that a woman should crush the serpent's 
head, to the high priest of Herod, who declared that 
the Divine Child should be born in Bethlehem of 
Judea, all of their patriarchs, prophets and kings 
knew but one hope, had but one promise — the Christ. 
When they had delivered God incarnate to the world 
their providential dispensation was ended. Unless 
the Germans have a mission from hell to deliver anti- 
Christ to this generation, their continual reference 
to their being messengers of "the promise" is rather 
belated and somewhat theatrical. 

It cannot be surely, that they have concentrated 
their vision on the crimes of Israel with a view to 
imitating them and thus meriting the awful punish- 
ments which were visited on the Jews. 

The Kaiser is more like Saul than any of the He- 
brew rulers. It will be remembered that Saul was 
anointed king, and ruled by divine right until he 
forfeited his place of honor by servile surrender to 
the devil. It is said that Prussian militarism is 
as honeycombed with spiritism as was the royal 
family of the Czar of Kussia before the fall of the 
Czar. It is whispered that the Kaiser and his flat- 



WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 29 

terers are acquainted with "mediums" who, like the 
woman of Endor, have "a familiar spirit." 

May not that account for the dipolmatic blunders 
of the Germans? There is some element of confu- 
sion in their war councils. 

The surrender of ambitious kings to diabolical sug- 
gestion is a very common occurrence. The devil 
tempts every ruler with the same old shopworn temp- 
tation. He has lost all powers of origination, since 
he was expelled from the confidences of God. 

Jesus Christ permitted the devil to tempt him in 
order that Christians might have a scientific demon- 
stration of how rulers of nations are beset with evil 
communications. "Again the devil took Him up 
into a very high mountain and showed him all of 
the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them and 
said to Him, all these will I give Thee if, falling 
down, Thou wilt adore me." 

If the Germans will review their historical read- 
ings, they will find that they are the Assyrians, not 
the Hebrews. They are exactly like the Assyrians 
in their glorification of war for war's sake, and in 
their continual boasting of their superiority over all 
the nations of the earth, and in their military policy 
of frightfulness for the premeditated purpose of ter- 
rorizing their opponents. 

The King of the Assyrians, like the King of the 
Germans, united in himself both the spiritual and 
civil authority ; he was both church and state — pope 
and emperor. Like the Kaiser, he had the power of 



30 WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 

life or death over his subjects, in him and him alone 
was vested the right to declare war or peace. Like 
the Germans, the Assyrians have no respect for inter- 
national law, nor for the rights of smaller nations. 
Their military creed was that might makes right, and 
that all crimes and atrocities were not only to be per- 
mitted, but to be encouraged in time of war. The 
story of Sennacharib, the great king, reads like a 
report of the Kaiser. Sennacharib, swaggering and 
boasting of the nations he had destroyed, driving his 
foaming steeds through torrents of innocent blood 
ruthlessly shed to gratify his lust of conquest, proph- 
ecying that his god was altogether Assyrian and 
would deliver the whole earth to the Assyrian sword, 
arrived at the gates of Jerusalem and there sent in- 
solent and boastful messages to the good King 
Ezekias : 

"Perhaps, said the great king of the Assyrians, 
thou hast taken council to prepare thyself for bat- 
tle. On whom dost thou trust? Let not Ezekias 
deceive you. For he shall not deliver you out of my 
hands. Neither let him make you trust in the Lord." 

So far shalt thou go and no further, has ever been 
the decree of God to heathen boasters like Sennacha- 
rib and the Kaiser. The Bible says : 

"When Ezekias, the King, had received the mes- 
sage of the Assyrian, he went up into the house of 
the Lord and prayed in his sight, * * * and he 
sent to the prophet and asked him to pray for the 
nation." 



WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 31 

"And Isaiah, the son of Amos, sent to Ezekias 
saying, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel. I have 
heard the prayers thou hast made to me concerning 
Sennacharib, King of the Assyrians. By the way he 
came he shall return, and into this city he shall not 
come, saith the Lord. * * * And it came to pass 
that night that an angel of the Lord came and slew 
in the camp of the Assyrians a hundred and eighty- 
five thousand. And when he arose early in the 
morning he saw all the bodies of the dead. And 
Sennacharib, King of the Assyrians, departing, went 
away and he returned and abode in Mneve." 

Byron, who, like some proud arch-angel fallen, 
delighted to furl his darkly radiant wing on the field 
of defeat, has given a vivid picture of this historic 
disaster in that matchless poem, The Destruction 
of Sennacharib. 

Berosus, the Caldean historian, gives a very dra- 
matic account of this calamity. Herodotus also. 
These and other profane historians, however, 
attribute the death of so many soldiers and officers 
in one night to a pestilence caused by wild white 
mice in the camp. Josephus sees in the awful event 
one of the many certain and tremendous judgments 
of God with which all history is filled. 

WAR AND CHRISTIANITY. 

Does the fact, as shown by history that God 
answers prayer with military victory, commit Him 
to war, to its declaration and its consequences? 



32 WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 

Although this is not in any sense of the word a 
theological argument, my intention being to confine 
myself to historical verities; nevertheless I will 
digress for a few moments to a matter which has 
given many good people grave concern during the 
present war. With all the Christian nations of the 
world at war, the question has been many times 
asked, "Has Christianity failed?" 

Without a broad line of demarkation between the 
Christian church and the Christian state, it would 
be difficult to answer that question right now. St. 
Augustine says: "Nor would God permit evil at all 
unless He could draw good out of evil." 

In his encyclical, The Christian Constitution of 
States, Pope Leo clearly defines this distinction: 
"The Almighty, therefore, has appointed the charge 
of the human race between two powers, the eccle- 
siastical and the civil, the one being set over divine, 
and the other over human things. Each in its kind 
is supreme, each has fixed limits within which it is 
contained, limits which are defined by the nature 
and special object of the providence of each ; so that 
there is, we may say, an orbit traced out within 
which the action of each is brought into play by its 
own native right. * * * God, who forsees all things, 
and is the author of these powers, has marked out 
the course of each in the right correlation to the 
other. 'For the powers that are, are ordained of 
God, one of the two has for its chief object the well- 
being of the mortal life; the other of the everlasting 



WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 33 

joys of heaven. Whatever, therefore, in things human 
is of a sacred character, whatever belongs either of 
its own nature or by reason of the end to which it 
is referred, to the salvation of souls or to the wor- 
ship of God, is subject to the power and judgment of 
the Church. Whatever is to be ranged under the 
civil and political order is rightly subject to civil 
authority. Jesus Christ has himself given command 
that what is Caesar's is to be rendered to Caesar, and 
what belongs to God is to be rendered to God." 

Now, war is ranged under the civil and political 
order and is subject to civil authority. Nations 
are permitted by God to use military force in their 
necessary and just defense; but peace is the business 
of the Church, to defend, to preach, and to promul- 
gate. Peace was promised not to the whole world, 
but only to men of good will, all its machinery is 
built for this end. 

The fiat of Omnipotence, "Let there be light" was 
followed instantaneously by light, not for a day or 
an hour, but forever, as long as our universe shall 
last. The fiat of Omnipotence to St. Peter, "Put up 
thy sword" has been obeyed by the Church of Christ 
from the beginning, and will be obeyed unto the end 
of the Christian dispensation. If this were not the 
case, popes, cardinals, priests and ministers of the 
gospel would all be men of war, churches would be 
armed citadels, and their congregations soldiers, the 
Pope of Rome would be commander-in-chief, in full 
military regalia, of three hundred million militarists, 



34 WHENCE COMETH VICTOEY? 

all under bis direction, actively in war, or preparing 
for war as a means of spreading Christianity. The 
spectacle of Pope Benedict, the spiritual ruler of 
all these millions of people, without a single ship 
or a regiment of soldiers, is eloquent illustration 
of the disarmament of the Christian Church. The 
choice of Cod for the peace of his Church is revealed 
in the Old Testament. David said: "I prepared 
all things for the building of the Temple * * * and 
God said to me: 'Thou shalt not build a house to 
my name, because thou art a man of war and has 
shed blood.' " 

Although Moses spake face to face with God, 
nevertheless the choice for the high priesthood did 
not fall to Moses. In Deuteronomy, Moses says : "He 
shall be king with the most right, the princes of 
the people being assembled with the tribes^of Israel." 
His other titles are General, Governor, Ruler, but the 
headship of the Jewish Church was to Aaron, who 
was not a man of war nor a "shedder of blood" as 
was Moses. 

I am of the opinion that the military failure of 
the Crusaders was due to this jealousy of God lest 
the prestige of military victory lend too great glory 
to the sword as a weapon of Christianity. 

I do not mean to assert that there were not many 
splendid victories to the Crusaders, but the final 
wind-up was in disaster and defeat of the control 
of the Holy Land and places. The peculiar times 
and conditions of the crusades, their war against 



WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 35 

religious armies intent on conversion by the sword 
rendered the presumption possible not only to in- 
fidels but to themselves that they were militant 
Christianity, rather than militant Christian Civili- 
zation. Had God appointed to them unvarying, 
continuous, and final victory as he did to Moses and 
Joshua, the prestige of the sword might have become 
a menace to the peaceable spread of Christianity by 
moral suasion. 

The conquest of the Holy lands by General Allenby 
is in no danger of being confused with Missionary 
movements. 

It has been a sincere enterprise of civilization 
to defend itself from an ancient foe. 

"The Lord keeping watch o'er Israel slumbereth 
not, nor sleepeth." 

The Christian Church must be above the suspicion 
of intimacy with the sword. The white lightening of 
Christ discrimination between the Church and State 
does not hesitate to strike the military halo even 
of His saints. 

The most disastrous of all the crusades was that in 
which St. Louis and his three sons embarked. The 
Catholic Encyclopedia has this to say of Saint Louis : 
"Saint Louis thought only of the Crusades and hear- 
ing from the Missonaries of Tunis he landed there 
hoping to convert to Christianity the Prince of 
Tunis." I have mentioned Saint Louis in this con- 
nection because of all the royal personages of the 
Crusades he was the most illustrious for sanctity: 



36 WHENCE COMETH VICTOEY? 

"by his personal qualifications and saintliness, he 
added greatly to the prestige of the French Govern- 
ment not only during his life but for many centuries 
afterwards. In his wars for the defense of his realm 
he was at all times eminently successful, though 
he was greater in peace and diplomacy than in war. 
He realized in medievial France, the fair far off 
dream of our modern idealists, an international 
court of appeals. "The Court of the King was regu- 
larly organized, having competent experts and judi- 
cial commissions acting at regular intervals. All 
Christendom looked upon Saint Louis as an Inter- 
national judiciary." 

The Crusades were not religious Armies organized 
to defend the doctrine of Christianity, nor must they 
be confused with the pilgrimages to the Holy Land; 
the Crusades were well within their rights to arma- 
ment as representatives of the State, intended to 
protect the citizens of the various allied nations 
from infidel tyranny and to rescue the holy places. 
The part played by the Popes and Monks was by 
way of aid and assistance to civilization, the free gift 
of the Church to the State, whose danger they fore- 
saw and whose defense they urged upon the Nations. 
But for the Crusades Europe like Asia would have 
had a Mohametan civilization. Like in spirit and 
intent is the aid and encouragement given by the 
Church to our modern crusade in urging our citizens 
to enlist in the army and navy and to contribute 
of their means to the Liberty Bonds. Recently 



WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 37 

Cardinals Gibbons, Farley and O'Connel, have issued 
an appeal to the members of the Catholic Church "To 
fight like heroes and pray like saints for victory and 
ministers of all denominations have been equally 
loyal and patriotic. 

History has many notable instances of the judg- 
ments of God against the spread of His religion by 
armies. I mention one well known. 

When the Spanish Armada was sent on its way 
for the conquest of England, which was a purely 
national and political ambition, and might possibly 
have been allowed, Philip II, King of Spain, inserted 
into this military expedition the intent and purpose 
to reconvert England and bring her back into the 
church of the fathers. The Spanish Armada was in- 
gloriously defeated. 

Mohammed, spiritual and civil ruler of Islam, be- 
lieved and taught in the Koran that God looked upon 
war as the natural avocation of nations and put a 
sword in his hands and commanded him to spread 
the religious culture of Islam by war, to enlarge his 
church by war, and to glorify war as the supreme 
good of mankind. 

The Kaiser, spiritual and civil ruler of the Ger- 
mans, so believes and preaches with the sword. All 
heathen and pagan nations, whose kings were both 
their spiritual and civil rulers, held to this doctrine. 
Their chief gods were war gods, like unto the Kaiser's 
gott; their occupation was war. It was to them 
what business is to the modern world, their means 



38 WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 

of living, of acquiring property, wealth and repu- 
tation. To be safe they had to be powerful, and to be 
powerful, they must plunder and coerce their neigh- 
bors. Their empires were tyrannies and they trusted 
solely to terror and force to uphold them. They ap- 
pealed to what the Greeks called the Eternal Law of 
Nature, that the weak should be coerced by the strong. 
If war had not paid and paid well, those rulers 
could not have carried out their schemes of military 
conquest. Their appeal was to the business instinct 
of the soldier, and woe to that king who denied to his 
army the spoils of victory. That is the explanation 
of the Kaiser's refusal to consider a peace without 
annexation or indemnity. It spoils the business 
proposition of his war. 

"The war really had its origin in 1892 at a meeting 
held at Potsdam Palace", stated Commisioner of 
Agriculture H. K. Bryson, in an impressive address 
at a meeting of the East Tennessee Farmer's Con- 
vention recently. He spoke of a document submitted 
by the "Beast of Berlin" twenty-six years ago in 
which the Kaiser had unfolded his dream of world 
domination and plan to crush civilization under the 
heel of Prussianism. 

"It was Ben Hardi who said at Potsdam that Ger- 
many's agriculture paid about 6 per cent, on the 
investment, her manufactories 8 per cent, but that 
her war against Schleswig-Holstein 1000 per cent., 
Alsace-Lorraine 10,000 per cent., and that the war* o£ 
1915 would pay 20,000 per cent. The war really had 



WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 39 

its origin in 1892 at a meeting held at Potsdam 
Palace. 

"On that occasion the Kaiser submitted a con- 
fidential document headed 'The Pan-German Em- 
pire.' 'On the second line from Hamburg to the 
North Sea to the Persian Gulf to the south, the third 
line by 1915, Germany would have 250,000,000 people.' 
'Our ultimate goal.' said the Kaiser, 'is the Germani- 
zation of all the peoples of the world.' He further 
said that Alexander, Ciesar, Hannibal and Napoleon 
had all dreamed of a world-wide empire, without 
accomplishing it, but he, too, had dreamed and would 
success. All of this years before the war began." 

Mahomet's armies were paid in cities and palaces, 
wives and concubines and slaves, and the unearned 
wealth of industry. They attained to world domin- 
ion and to military glory. Nor did this cash valua- 
tion which armies placed upon their services end 
in this world; pay-day was extended to eternity. 
Mahomet's paradise was a reward for military 
service. Its furnishings were the spoils of wars 
fought upon the earth, cities and palaces and un- 
earned wealth, wives and seventy-two concubines 
per soldier was the reward of those who fell in battle. 

Mahomet's doctrine that "war exalt eth a nation" 
is the German doctrine; as with the Mahomedans war 
was to be continuous, so with the Germans. 

' k We must not look for permanent peace as a result 
of this war. Heaven defend Germany from that." — 
Oskar Schmitz. 



40 WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 

"Only over the black gate of the cemetery * * * 
can we read the words, 'Eternal peace to all people.' 
For peoples who live and strive, the only maxim and 
motto must be 'Eternal War !' " — Klaus Wagner. 

"Perpetual peace is a dream, and it is not even a 
beautiful dream." — Graf Moltke. 

"We children of the future * * * do not by any 
means think it desirable that the kingdom of right- 
eousness and peace should be established on the 
earth." — Friedrich Nietzche. 

"Ye shall love peace as a means to new wars, and 
the short peace better than the long. I do not advise 
you to work, but to fight." — Friedrick Nietzsche. 

"That Germans do not fit into the bustle of peace- 
able nations is the proudest ornament of the German 
character." — Maximillian Harden. 

Was Mahomet, and is the German Kaiser, and were 
the Pagan war lords ministers of God anointed by 
him to preach the doctrine of the sword? Solomon, 
who was a man of peace, and came nearer to making 
Israel a world power and an example of wealth, 
prosperity and happiness than any man of Israel, has 
advised us in the book of wisdom, "Seek not death 
in the error of your life. Neither procure you de- 
struction by the works of your hand. For God made 
not death; neither hath he pleasure in the destruc- 
tion of the living. For he created all things that 
they might be ; and he made the nations of the earth 
for health, and there is no poison of destruction in 
them, nor Kingdom of Hell on Earth." 



WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 41 

Jesus Christ said to the Apostle Peter, "to put 
up his sword," and committed Christianity to a 
program, a system, and a heirarchy of peace. How, 
then, may we account for the Kingdom of Hell on 
Earth, which the Kaiser has inaugurated? God's 
tolerance of evil in the world is one of the mysteries 
of His supreme rulership that has not yet been ex- 
plained to us. It seems to be concerned in some way 
with man's freedom of will. "God made man from 
the beginning and left him in the hand of his own 
counsel. He added his commandments and precepts. 
If thou wilt keep the commandments and perform 
them with acceptable fidelity forever they shall pre- 
serve thee. He hath set water and fire before thee, 
stretch forth thy hand to which thou wilt. Before 
man is life and death, good and evil, that which he 
shall choose shall be given him." If there is and has 
been war since the beginning of civilization, it is 
because some rulers of nations have of their free will 
chosen war. 

I do not think anyone but the Kaiser fails to ob- 
serve that the present German war is man made; a 
purely artificial production, premeditated, .prear- 
ranged, artificially propagated like any other adver- 
tisement, and sent on its way of destruction by ma- 
chinery man-manufactured for the occasion. 

This war machine forty-five years in the building 
has been, according to his own statement the pet 
and plaything of the Kaiser from his earliest boy- 
hood. When the time came for the awful crime of 



42 WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 

the century hell had instruments at hand for its will. 
May not this account for the Kaiser's passionate in- 
sistence that he is under the control of supernatural 
agencies ? 

That he is the accredited minister to this hell on 
earth? Inspired by the same preternatural devil 
who, under the name of Bel, Moloch, Mars and other 
demon gods, aided those Pagan, heathen and Moham- 
medan rulers to systems so similiar to the German 
war policy as to seem identical? 

I presume, wrote Mr. W. E. Gladstone, "that most 
Christians are but too well convinced that they have 
to do with principalities and powers, the rulers of the 
darkness of this world ; that they are beset by great 
personal schemes of evil agency, under which are 
method and vigilance, employing whatever bad 
means, and even good, will serve their purpose, and 
raised in their work of seduction and ruin to what 
seems a terrible perfection." 

The simple and definite doctrine of Christianity 
is that there is an individual malevolent power, hos- 
tile to the Creator and to his aims respecting man, 
and capable under certain conditions of influencing 
the human will and having for its aim the moral 
ruin of mankind, and who is engaged in a fierce and 
persistent and never-ceasing conflict with the world 
of which Christ, the son of God, is Lord and Master. 

There is a fearful prophecy in the Apocolypse of a 
war such in magnitude as we are engaged in. St. 
John sees that this war originated in Hell and had 
for its authors the Dragon, who is Lucifer, the prince 



WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 43 

of the fallen angels; the Beast, who is the serpent 
that seduced Eve, and the false prophet, who found 
in Mahomet a lodging place for the instigation of 
perpetual war. From the mouth of these devils went 
forth "unclean spirits like frogs," for they are the 
spirits of devils working signs, and they go forth 
unto the Kings of the whole earth to gather them to 
battle against the great day of Almighty God. 

Can it be that the Kaiser, beset as he is with 
insane delusions, is the agent of these devils, plainly 
seen by St. John, as occupied with promoting and 
propagating the greatest war the world has ever 
witnessed? And if the German spies are those 
unclean spirits, which, to the seer in the far distance 
of time, had the appearance of squatting frogs, may 
not their incessant efforts to stir up war all over the 
world be accounted for? 

That God tolerates war is to admit well-established 
facts of history ; but that is very different from the 
glorification of war. It must be remembered that 
both in the events of the past and the prophecies of 
the future God is committed to the final and total 
destruction of nations given over to the idolatry of 
the suord. Said Christ to St. Peter, "Put up thy 
sword into its place, for all that take the sword shall 
perish with the sword." 

Where now are Babylon and Nineveh ? Where the 
Greece of Alexander the Great? Where the Rome 
of Caesar? Where is Islam? 



44 WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 

Nations have no hereafter. Their judgment day 
is here and now. They are rewarded or punished in 
this world. They rise and fall and go on their way 
obedient to the law of retributive justice. There is 
no mystery in the certain and tremendous judgments 
of God; they are the visible events of history. As 
hanging is appointed unto murder by our laws, so is 
the condemnation of militarism unto the sword. 
The destruction of Baltazar, he of the fearful hand- 
writing on the wall, was to Darius the Mede, and so 
other worshipers of militarism likewise perished by 
the sword. 

Nor did the somber judgments of God halt at Cal- 
vary and surrender to the gentle mercy of Christ, but 
kept their awful right of way adown the centuries, 
proclaiming God's sovereignty in civil government. 
Moses commanded the Hebrews, when they had for- 
gotten God and gone down into captivity, to confess 
that their punishment was a judgment for sins 
against God's laws. To Josephus, the great Jewish 
historian, the judgments of God were the central 
illuminating facts of history. He has given a 
detailed description of the destruction of the Hebrew 
nation. The story as told by him is one of the sub- 
limest in history : 

"After incredible exertions for fifteen days, this 
first defense was broken and the camp of Titus was 
pitched within the wall. Another week elapsed 
before the Lower City was in the possession of the 
Romans. Then they laid siege against Antonia, 



WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 45 

which, was afterward razed to the ground to give 
access to the Temple. ' The Jews, driven from post 
to post, took refuge in the inner temple and there 
fought for their lives, but in vain. The sanctuary 
itself was stormed and destroyed by fire. Nothing 
now remained to be taken but the Upper City. But 
this was at length stormed, and Titus, after more 
than seven months, had the whole city in possession. 
No part of the city remained standing except the 
three great towers of Herod's royal palace, which 
served the twofold purpose of a barracks for the 
garrison left there and as a monument of the enor- 
mous difficulties the Roman arms had overcome. 
The population had died in thousands of famine and 
pestilence and bloodshed during the siege, while the 
survivors were either massacred, sold into slavery, 
sent to the mines or reserved for the triumphal pro- 
cession and the sport of the theater." 

The mighty are mightily tormented. Charles XII 
of Sweden and Napoleon Bonaparte, two of the 
greatest modern militarists, came face to face with 
the adverse judgments of God in the snows of Rus- 
sia. Both were scoffers at the representatives of 
Jesus Christ. Charles XII boasted that the Pope 
would feel his vengeance and bow in humble sur- 
render to him. 

Bvron links these two in consonance of disaster : 



4G WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 

" 'Twas after Pultowa's dread day, 

When fortune left the Royal Swede, 
Around a slaughtered army lay, 

No more to combat and to bleed. 
The power and glory of the war, 

Faithless as their vain votaries men, 
Had passed to the triumphant Czar, 

And Moscow's walls were safe again. 

Until a day, more dark and drear, 

And a memorable year, 

Should give to slaughter and to shame 

A mightier host and haughtier name; 

A greater wreck, a deeper fall, 

A shock to one, a thunderbolt to all." 

The incident in the career of Napoleon Bonaparte 
to which these lines refer has been historically 
described by Allison: . / . 

" 'What does the Pope mean,' said Napoleon to 
Eugene, in July, 1907, 'by the threat of excommuni- 
cating me? Does he think the world has gone back 
a thousand years? Does he suppose the arms will 
fall from the hands of my soldiers?' Within two 
years after these remarkable words were written the 
Pope did excommunicate him, in return for the con- 
fiscation of his whole dominions, and in less than 
four years more the arms did fall from the hands of 
his soldiers, and the hosts, apparently invincible, 
which he had collected were dispersed and ruined 
by the blasts of winter. 'The weapons of the sol- 



WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 17 

diers,' says Segur, in describing the Russian retreat, 
'appeared of an unsupportable weight to their stiff- 
ened arms. During their frequent falls they fell 
from their hands, and, destitute of the power of 
raising them from the ground, they were left in the 
snow. They did not throw them away; famine and 
cold tore them from their grasp.' 'The soldiers could 
no longer hold their weapons,' says Salgues; 'they 
fell from the hands even of the bravest and most 
robust. The muskets dropped from the frozen arms 
of those who bore them.' " (Hist., ch. lx, 9th ed.) 

Allison adds : "There is something in these marvel- 
ous coincidences beyond the operations of chance, and 
which even a Protestant historian feels himself bound 
to mark for the observation of future ages. The 
world had not gone back a thousand years, but the 
Being existed with whom a thousand years are as 
one day, and one day as a thousand years." 

Is there an angel in the snows of Russia forever 
guarding that land of dumb mysticism from the 
message of the seas? 

Eastward democracy sweeps its renovating tides. 

If the judgments of God were not halted by Chris- 
tianity, neither were national victories. In all the 
ancient pomp and circumstance of war they march 
adown the centuries, escorted by the flaming min- 
isters of prayer, bearing on their banners the signet 
seal of omnipotence. 



4S WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 

CONSTANTINE THE GREAT. 

The coincidence of prayer and national victory has 
illustration in the life of Constantine the Great. In 
or about the year A. D. 311 the Christian citizens of 
the Koman Empire, tortured and agonizing under 
the persecution of their pagan rulers, began a cru- 
sade of prayer for relief, similar, it would seem, to 
the "groanings" of the Hebrews in Egyptian cap- 
tivity. As God answered their prayers, with Moses, so 
He answered the Christians of Rome with Constantine 
the Great, a ruler who changed the history of the 
world into a new course and made Christianity the 
religion of the empires. While Constantine was 
young and obscure and as yet a pagan, being engaged 
in a war with his rival, Maxentious, he consulted the 
horispices, who predicted disaster to his army, which 
was small and badly equipped in comparison with 
that of Maxentious. Humanly speaking, there was 
small chance for Constantine in this war. Pagan 
panegyrists say that Constantine prayed to the God 
of the Christians, but of this other historians are 
silent; but coincident with the supplications of the 
persecuted Christians there appeared to Constantine 
a luminous cross in the heavens, with the words, "In 
Hoc Signo Vinces" (In this sign wilt thou conquer). 
Others besides the young Emperor must have seen 
this glorious promise, for all of his warriors, though 
pagans, had the monogram of Christ emblazoned on 
their shields, and with absolute confidence in victory 
they advanced boldly against the overwhelming num- 



WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 49 

ber of Maxentious, defeated them in battle, slew their 
leader and thus established Constantine in supreme 
power as Emperor of the Roman Empire. The vision 
of the cross influenced the entire subsequent career 
of Constantine. It was the cause of his conversion 
and of his mother's conversion. She became the 
great St. Helena, who dedicated her life to excava- 
tions in Jerusalem, where, under a pagan temple, 
she found the true cross. There is thus a mystic 
connection between her life work and the vision of 
the cross to her great son. 

The day following the vision Constantine had 
designed, under his personal supervision, the cele- 
brated Laborum, his military standard, which bore 
a cross and the words in Greek, "In Hoc Signo 
Vincent." Fifty soldiers of the Imperial Guard dis- 
tinguished for bravery and piety were entrusted with 
the care and defense of the new sacred standard. 
Standards similar to the original Laborum were 
furnished to all the legions, and the monogram of 
Christ was engraved on the shields of the soldiers. 
Later the standard was placed in the hand of a 
statue to the Emperor in Rome, the pedestal of 
which wore the inscription, "By the aid of this salu- 
tory token of strength I have freed my city from the 
yoke of tyranny and restored to the Roman Senate 
and people the ancient splendor and glory." 

It is said that Constantine adorned the Christian 
churches magnificently and that he treated the clergy 
with distinguished favor, inviting them to Court and 



50 WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 

to his table. When they had suffered for the faith 
he kissed their wounds. 

Eusebius writes: "In his palace he had a chapel, 
to which he was fond of retiring and where he read 
the Bible and prayed on bended knees, ardently 
beseeching God for his necessities." 

Constantine and St. Paul both had luminous vis- 
ions of victory — the one for the State, the other for 
the Church. To St. Paul the vision meant disarma- 
ment, the complete renunciation of military ambi- 
tion and the dedication of his life, unto martyrdom, 
to preaching the gospel. To Constantine the vision 
was for military victory, for the defense of Christian 
institutions and for the introduction into the great 
Eoman Empire of the political doctrine of liberty 
of conscience. 

The first official act of Constantine was an edict 
granting toleration to the Christians, and later, 
"taking into consideration the service which man 
owes to the Diety," he granted to Christians and to 
pagans absolute freedom in the exercise of their 
religion. 

CLOVIS. 

Like Constantine the Great, Clovis was a pagan, 
young, with a small, inferior army, when he, too, 
was favored with a military victory so manifestly 
the favor of God that it influenced his whole subse- 
quent career. 

However historians may differ as to the legendary 
glory of Clovis, they all agree that he was power- 



WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 51 

fully convinced of the divine intervention at the 
crucial battle of Zurich, which, despite the valor of 
his small army, was going against him when he 
prayed aloud to the God of his Christian wife, Clo- 
tilda, promising that if the divine decision was to 
him he would become a Christian, a promise which 
he faithfully kept; immediately after the battle he, 
with three thousand of his chief men, were baptized 
at Rheims. He became the champion of Christendom 
and laid the foundations of the Frankish Empire in 
faith and obedience to Jesus Christ. 

The intervention of God in war means vastly more 
than a decisive military victory; it means God in 
civil government, generally for a thousand years. 

JOAN OF ARC. 

From the most modern of nations, from the 
achieved liberties of the twentieth century, from the 
land of factories and the whir of scientific industry 
comes the great American — he who rose to fame on 
a contagion of laughter, even he, our own Mark 
Twain — to write the history of Joan of Arc, with 
all due reverence to its spiritual values, Mark Twain 
yields to no cloistered mystic, to no Catholic biog- 
rapher, in his faith in the inspired mission of Joan 
of Arc, who put an end to the one hundred years of 
war which the English had waged against France. 
Immediately preceding the advent of Joan of Arc 
France had gone down on its knees in prayer ; waves 
of devotion, led by the clergy swept the land; and 



52 WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 

lo, the miracle of the ages : the peasant warrior maid 
of Doremy. Joan of Arc spent her leisure mo- 
ments, even while engaged in war, in prayer. She 
called constantly upon the people and the clergy of 
France to pray and to organize processions of prayer, 
and she prevailed upon the officers and soldiers of her 
army to attend mass every day. 

Kossuth writes : "Consider this unique and impos- 
ing distinction. Since the writing of human history 
began, Joan of Arc is the only person, of either sex, 
who has ever held supreme command of the military 
forces of a nation at the age of seventeen." 

ALFRED THE GREAT. 

As Christianity progressed it entered, like light 
and warmth and energy, into the institution of civil- 
ization and established its own institutions, which 
were sanctuaries of prayer. Charlemagne and Saint 
Louis of France cherished the religious organizations 
of their several nations as harbingers of God's bless- 
ing. Alfred the Great of England, to whom the 
British attribute every excellence, said by Freeman 
to be "the most perfect character in history, no other 
on record having so thoroughly united all the virtues 
both of the ruler and the private man," was more 
zealous for men of prayer and learning as the bul- 
wark of his kingdom than for armies and fleets. 

I have said that the world conquerors whom I 
have cited into court as witnesses to the coincidents 
of prayer and military victory were not necessarily 



WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 53 

saintly men, nor in some instances even good men; 
but they were strong men, of sound minds and great 
good common sense. William the Conqueror does 
not rank with Alfred the Great and Saint Louis in 
holiness of life, but he is not far behind them in 
robust faith and reliance on prayer as a necessary 
precedent to victory. Like all successful men of 
history, he had great reverence and respect for the 
clergy. Before setting out for his conquest, which 
determined the history of England for a thousand 
years, he made a journey to Rome and there sought 
the blessing of the Pope. After he had conquered 
he sent the captured standard of Harold to the Pope 
in testimony of his gratitude to God for the victory. 

Crecy, in his decisive battles of the world, has this 
interesting paragraph : "The night before the battle 
of Hastings is said to have been passed by the two 
armies in very different manner. The Saxon soldiers 
spent it in joviality, singing their national songs 
and drinking huge horns of ale and wine around 
their camp fires. The Normans, when they looked 
to their arms and horses, confessed themselves to 
the priest and received the sacrament. As in olden 
days Moses stood upon an eminence and lifted up 
his hands in prayer during the battle of the Amela- 
kites, so, during the battle of Hastings, Norman 
priests and Monks were stationed on the heights 
overlooking the battlefield, with orders from William 
the Conqueror to pray for victory during the entire 
progress of the conflict." 



54 WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 

The old historian Daniel forcibly remarks : "Thus 
was tried, by the great assize of God's judgment in 
battle, the right of power between the English and 
the Norman nations — a battle the most memorable 
of all others — and, however miserably lost, yet most 
nobly fought by the English." 

FERDINAND AND ISABELLA. 

The ehivalric victories of Spain written in the 
events of the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella are 
so shot through and through with spiritual values as 
to seem the very romance of Christian civilization. 
Bancroft has written that Spain was at this time a 
hundred years ahead of the rest of Europe in the 
arts of civilization and the science of government. 

Ferdinand was a strong man, a brilliant general, 
an able ruler; but he was not the equal of Isabella 
in faith and piety, and to the extent of this difference 
she surpassed him in counsel, in the wisdom of legis- 
lation and in the spirit of scientific progress. Wil- 
berforce says that "Isabella was not only the greatest 
ruler Spain has ever had, but one of the greatest 
sovereigns in the history of the world." Pope Leo 
writes of her as "That most pious masculine-minded 
and great-souled woman who understood better than 
any other the great mind of Christopher Columbus, 
for she had declared of Columbus that he was going 
to thrust himself upon the vast ocean to achieve a 
most signal thing for the faith of divine glory ; and 
to Columbus himself she writes on his second return 



WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 55 

that the expenses she had incurred and was about 
to incur for the Indian expedition had been well dis- 
posed, for thence would insure the spreading of 
Catholicism." 

Of her spirit of prayer and her appreciation of 
the devotion of religious order, history is eloquent. 
Washington Irving writes of her: "Reverend pre- 
lates and holy friars always surrounded the Queen." 
And she was prepared as with a tented cathedral 
to render prayer, praise and thanksgiving upon every 
field of battle. After the surrender of Granada, to 
quote Irving, "the sovereigns sank upon their knees, 
giving thanks to God for this great triumph; the 
whole assembled hosts followed their example, and 
the choristers of the royal chapel broke forth into 
the solemn anthem of Te Deum Laudamus." 

The wars of Ferdinand and Isabella against the 
Moors gained for themselves the title of holy wars, 
but they were in no respect missionary enterprises 
for the spread of Christianity. They were purely 
defensive wars, fought on the soil of Spain, against 
an invader who had harassed the nation for seven 
hundred years. 

The enterprise of Columbus was of a different 
character, though scientific and of scientific value to 
civilization, it was both to Isabella and Columbus 
a missionary movement, and no military conquest of 
the Indians was intended or countenanced by Isa- 
bella. It was never permitted by Jesus Christ to 
propagate Christianity with the sword, and in obedi- 



56 WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 

ence to this doctrine, Isabella sternly rebuked any- 
one who sought to turn the peaceable discovery of 
America into a military conquest. Every single gov- 
ernor sent out from Spain who yielded to militarism 
was recalled and severely punished. The mystery of 
Spain's ingratitude to Columbus was that he was 
accused of degenerating into a military despot, and 
while this was not true, he suffered while the accusa- 
tion stood. 

COLUMBUS. 

While Christopher Columbus was in no way a 
man of war and does not properly belong in this 
study of war, he was nevertheless of such tremendous 
import to civilization as to challenge the investiga- 
tion of his methods of conquest. In his letters under 
his own signature, he says that at all times and under 
all circumstances the most trying he had recourse to 
prayer. 

Fortunately for his greatness, the greatest of biog- 
raphers has given us a spiritual insight into the sus- 
taining force behind the sublime courage, daring and 
achievement of Columbus. Pope Leo writes : "Colum- 
bus resolved to go before and prepare the ways for 
the Gospel, and, deeply absorbed in this idea, gave 
all his energies to it, attempting hardly anything 
without religion for his guide and piety for his com- 
panion. * * * Within the walls of religious 
house he matured his great design of meditated ex- 
ploration, having for confidant and advisor a relig- 



WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 57 

ious, a disciple of St. Francis of Assissi. Being at 
length about to depart, he attended to all that con- 
cerned the welfare of his soul * * * he im- 
plored the Queen of Heaven to assist his efforts and 
direct his course ; and he ordered that no sail should 
be hoisted until the name of the Trinity had been 
invoked * * * at each disembarkation he of- 
fered up prayer to Almighty God, nor did he take 
possession save in the name of Jesus Christ. Upon 
whatsoever shores he might be driven, his first act 
was to set upon the shore the standard of the Holy 
Cross and the name of the Divine Redeemer, which 
he had so often sung on the open sea to the murmur 
of the waves." 

HERNANDO CORTES. 

"The great are apt to believe in the greatness of 
others," writes Sir Arthur Helps, who has to say of 
the Conquistadores : "The triumphant march of Alex- 
ander the Great, the rise and fall of Rome, the con- 
quest of British India, afford narratives to which the 
world will ever listen ; but that one-half of the globe 
should remain for ages ignorant of the other, that it 
should be led by the insight and perseverance of one 
man to discover this long-concealed hemisphere, and 
that in the short period of fifty or sixty years the 
larger part of a new world should be subdued by a 
handfull of men from the old world, form a narra- 
tive of vast ends accomplished by scanty means the 
like of which is not to be found in other annals ; it is 



58 WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 

a tale that tells of deeds that no longer admit of 
imitation, which describe warfare resembling some 
strange, unequal conflict in fable or mythology, 
rather than the ordinary encounters of mortal man, 
and which in the unrivaled nobility of its pictur- 
esque and romantic incidents lives only in the mar- 
velous records of Spanish discovery, conquest and 
colonization." 

The conquest of Mexico by Cortes has the appear- 
ance of being a Divine decision against what we have 
come to mean by the word militarism. Like the 
Prussians, the Aztecs were committed to a ruthless 
system of miltarism. The germ of this loathsome 
disease had spread into every tribe and nation. War 
was the only honorable occupation. Labor was rele- 
gated to women as degraded and despised by war- 
riors. Their religion was a worship of the God of 
War and Death, to whom they annually offered thou- 
sands of victims. In a letter to Charles V, Father 
Motolina says: "In a sacrificial service to celebrate 
the opening of the great temple, lasting four days, 
80,400 men were sacrificed." Upon this occasion vic- 
tims were simultaneously sacrificed in fourteen tem- 
ples of the city, the hours being from sunrise to sun- 
set ; five minutes being the time required for the sac- 
rifice of each victim. 

Of the conquest Helps writes : "But the triumph of 
Cortes and the use he made of his power for which 
he has been likened to Judas Machabeus, was in the 
destruction of the hideous Mexican idols the cleans- 



WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 59 

ing of their foul chapels and the stern forbidding of 
human sacrifice. For this Cortes may be greatly 
praised, for this deed alone must ever separate him 
from the Timours, Attilas, Genghis-Kahns and other 
unmeaning, purposeless destroyers of mankind." 

When Cortes landed on the shores of Mexico he had 
about 450 men, 13 horses and a few battered old ships. 
If we did not have historical records that tell of the 
ardent faith and progress of these pioneers of Ameri- 
can civilization, we would know that they looked to 
Heaven for aid, since they had no other hope. Of 
the capture of Montezuma, Helps says: "This is an 
unparalleled transaction. There is nothing like it 
in the annals of the world." Bernal Diaz, in a letter, 
writes : "The night before this (unparalleled transac- 
tion) Cortes and his soldiers passed the entire night 
in prayer to the Lord that the enterprise might be 
conducted so as to redound to his service." 

The letters of Cortes and of Bernal Diaz are filled 
with references to the conqueror's continual appeals 
to heaven. "And being in this perplexity, consider- 
ing that nothing could be well planned or done but 
with the help of the guide and mover of all things: 
and celebrating masses and holding processions and 
other ceremonies for some days, supplicating God to 
direct me to do that which would best serve him." 

Cortes was so familiar with the Bible that he was 
enabled to explain to the Mexican chiefs not only the 
entire New Testament and the doctrine of the broth- 
erhood of man, but also the Old Testament, beginning 



00 WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 

with the creation of the world and ending with the 
birth of Christ. One of his ships was fitted out as a 
church, he and his little army attended mass every 
day, and every evening at the ringing of a bell they 
all knelt down in solemn prayer to God for their ne- 
cessities. 

The banner of Cortes was of black silk, with a red 
cross, and around the border the inscription, "Let us 
follow the Cross, and in that sign, if we have faith, 
we shall conquer." That banner might have been 
woven in the looms of Indian prophecy, so did it 
seem to fulfill the words and warning of their poets 
and priests. 

"There shall come the sign of a God who dwells on 
high, and the Cross which illumined the world shall 
be made manifest. The worship of false Gods shall 
cease," are the very words of their high priest Couch, 
a representative of many others. Like a cancer upon 
the fair breast of civilization, the Aztec government 
could not be cured, but had to be eradicated by the 
surgical operation of war. Cortes, like Mr. Wilson, 
in his dealing with the German government, clearly 
distinguished between the people and their war lords. 
Where he conquered, he did not exterminate; he re- 
spected the people and their rights ; he made a good 
ruler, and to his justice and fairness is due the fact 
that Mexico is today largely a nation of Indians, 
their greatest ruler, Diaz, being a descendant of the 
Aztecs. Though not overburdened with scrupJes, 
Cortes appreciated heroic sanctity in others. His 



WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 61 

letters to Charles V are full of appeals for monks and 
priests, and when they arrived in Mexico he treated 
them with the greatest generosity and respect, giving 
them full credit for the Christianization of the In- 
dians. National gratitude is a noble virtue. When 
General Pershing, in that French cemetery, said, 
"Well, Lafayette, here we are," our flower of national 
gratitude blooming unseen in millions of fields by 
the wayside, took on immortal beauty to forever 
wreath his brow with victory. Let us not forget in 
this hour of Democracy that Spain planted on the 
soil of the New World Republics. 

WASHINGTON. 

It seems gratuitous to write of one whose history 
is so well known, yet I could not consistently omit 
the great Washington from a catalogue of empire- 
builders. 

Irving traces his native nobility back to Norman- 
French ancestors, who came over with William the 
Conqueror and located in the palatinate of a princely 
bishop, who won his victories under the banners of 
the Holy Saint Cuthbert. "Hereditary rank may be 
an illusion, but hereditary virtue gives a patent of 
innate nobleness beyond the blazonry of the her- 
ald's college." 

Irving continues his observation as to Washing- 
ton's devout attendance at the Episcopal church, and 
says of public prayers under his leadership at the 
Great Meadows encampment: "It certainly was not 



62 WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 

one of the least striking pictures presented in this 
wild campaign, the youthful commander presiding 
with calm seriousness over a motley assemblage of 
half-equipped soldiers, leather-clad hunters and 
woodsmen, and painted savages, with their wives 
and children, and uniting them all in solemn devo- 
tion by his own example and demeanor." 

Again Irving : "Major-General Lee, with his usual 
profaneness, scoffed at a resolution of Congress ap- 
pointing a day of fasting and prayer; heaven, he ob- 
served, was ever found favorable to strong battalions 
* * * By order of Washington, the resolution of 
Congress was scrupulously enforced, all labor was 
suspended on the appointed day and officers and 
soldiers were required to attend Divine service armed 
and equipped and ready for immediate action." 

The heroic achievements of Washington "were un- 
dertaken with that solemn and sedate resolution and 
that hopeful reliance on supreme Goodness which be- 
longed to his magnanimous nature." His public ut- 
terances are all pervaded with the spirit as of one 
who prayed habitually. It was as if his life illus- 
trated the words of Pope Leo : "The gift of authority 
derives from God and is, as it were, a participation 
in the highest of all sovereignties, and should be ex- 
ercised as the power of God is exercised, with a 
fatherly solicitude which not only guides the whole, 
but reaches also to details." 

At the meeting of our First Congress, "To give 
proper dignity and solemnity to the proceedings of 



WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 63 

the house, it was moved on the following day that 
each morning the sessions should be opened with 
prayer. To this it was demurred that, as the dele- 
gates were of different religious sects, they might not 
consent to join in the same form of worship. Upon 
this, Mr. Samuel Adams arose and said he would 
willingly join in prayer with any gentleman of piety 
and virtue, whatever might be his cloth, provided he 
was a friend to his country. The Eev. Mr. Duche, 
an eminent Episcopal clergyman, in the course of 
the services, read out the Thirty-fifth Psalm, wherein 
David prayed for protection against his enemies : 
'Plead my cause, O Lord, with them that fight against 
me. Take hold of shield and buckler and stand up 
for my help. Draw out also the spear and stop the 
way of them that persecute me. Say unto my soul, 
I am thy salvation.' " 

"The imploring words of the Psalm spoke the feel- 
ings of all hearts present. John Adams writes in a 
letter to his wife : 'I never saw a greater effect upon 
an audience. It seemed as if Heaven had ordained 
that Psalm to be read on that morning.' " 

Not only was our nation baptized with the inspira- 
tion of patriotic prayer, but our noble ally, France, 
gave us of her spiritual aid as well as of her heroic 
blood. 

Edwin Ryan, in America, has this most interesting 
contribution: "At the earliest opportunity, after 
France had recognized our independence and openly 
allied herself with America in the struggle, her Am- 



64 WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 

bassador, M. Conrad Gerard, issued an invitation to 
the Government officials, of which, the following is a 
translation : 

" 'You are invited by the Minister Plenipotentiary 
of France to attend the Te Deum which will be 
chanted on Sunday, the fourth of this month, at 
noon, in the new Catholic chapel, to celebrate the 
anniversary of the independence of the United States 
of America. 

"Philadelphia, July 2, 1779." 

As will be seen, the ceremony was of an unmistak 
ably religious character and was not confined to the 
Te Deum, but included a sermon by the Franciscan 
Father Bandol, Chaplain to the Embassy, who was 
also the preacher two years later at the service in 
Philadelphia arranged by the French Ambassador to 
celebrate the victory at Yorktown. From his sermon 
at the Independence Day ceremony of 1779 I quote 
the following passage as peculiarly fitted for repeti- 
tion today: 

"Let us, in concert with each other, raise our hearts 
to the Eternal. Let us implore His infinite mercy 
to design to inspire the chiefs of the two nations with 
the wisdom and the strength necessary to bring to 
perfection the work He has begun; let us unite our 
voices in supplication to Him to pour forth His bless- 
ing on the councils and the arms of the Allies, that 
we may soon enjoy the sweetness of a peace that will 
cement the union and assure the constant prosperity 
of the two countries." 



WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 65 

"Sister in trial ! who shall count 

Thy generous friendship's claim, 
Whose blood ran mingling in the fount, 

That gave our land its name, 
Till Yorktown saw in blended line 

Our conquering arms advance, 
And victory's double garlands twine 

Our -banners, Vive la France." 

— Oliver Wendell Holmes. 

THE CIVIL WAR. 

Laying like a healed scar across the heart of the 
United States, the Civil War is of our modern times. 
Its veterans are yet honored, its widows are still in 
mourning, and on the graves of its martyred dead 
are fresh garlands bedewed with our love and grati- 
tude. 

Turning to the records of the Civil War, I had 
hoped to find there a registration of those who prayed 
as well as of those who fought. But modern rulers, 
unlike Moses and the prophets, have failed to record 
as of official value the prayers of the loyal, even 
though there are individuals living who knew of won- 
derful faith and prayers for peace. 

That both sides prayed is shown in the fact that 
our Republic did not fail, as was freely predicted by 
the statesmen of Europe. There is evidence that the 
South prayed in the final outcome of the war. And 
who shall say their prayers were not answered — not 
exactly as they wished, but in a wiser and better way. 



66 WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 

The preservation of the Union and the abolition of 
slavery are today matters for gratitude to God by 
the entire South. The North prayed for their vic- 
tory, otherwise it would have been a military con- 
quest, rather than a restrained rebuke to slavery. 
Neither let us forget the prayers of the negro slaves ; 
they were a praying race. Like the Israelites of the 
Egyptian captivity, they were liberated without the 
loss of life among their people. 

I have said that in my search of Civil War records 
I could find no official registration of those who 
prayed, but even as I write a book comes to my 
hand and in it is the very record I sought from one 
who knew whereof he spoke. 

In his second inaugural address delivered at Wash- 
ington Mrach 4th, 1865, Abraham Lincoln spoke 
these memorable words : 

"Neither party expected for the war the magnitude 
or the duration which it has already attained. 
Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict 
might cease when, or even before the conflict itself 
should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, 
and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both 
read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and 
each invokes His aid against the other. Let us judge 
not, that we be not judged. The prayer of both could 
not be answered. That of neither has been answered 
fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. Woe 
unto the world because of offences, for it must needs 
be that offences come, but woe to that man by whom 



WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 67 

the offence cometh. If we shall suppose that Ameri- 
can slavery is one of these offences, which, in the 
providence of God, must needs come, but which, hav- 
ing continued through His appointed time, He now 
wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and 
South this terrible war as the woe due to those by 
whom the offence came, shall we discern there any 
departure from those Divine attributes which the 
believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? 
Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this 
mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away." 
SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR. 
The Spanish-American War was plainly a rebuke 
to Spanish militarism, that quixotic monster which 
drained the life blood of Spain's citizens by those 
long-drawn-out, useless colonial wars; as if the Al- 
mighty Arbiter of nations wished to spare us the 
contagion of militarism in our necessary war against 
that demon, there was no vainglory and boast- 
ings. The history of the war was written in humor 
by Mr. Dooley, and its noblest eulogist was Arch- 
bishop Ireland, who soothed the pangs of defeat to 
the Spaniards by the sweetest and gentlest Christian 
sympathy. Of the prayer said during the Spanish- 
American war, I have some personal knowledge, since 
I was thrown with many whose husbands, fathers 
and sons were in the war. The prayers of these good 
people were for the personal safety and security of 
the fighting men and in holy convents saints stormed 
heaven with prayers by night and day. I could not 



68 WHENCE COMETH VICTOEY? 

help but think of these devout prayers when I read 
that the captains of Dewey's squadron came one after 
another on board the Olympic and reported no cas- 
ualties. In the naval engagement at Santiago har- 
bor the American victors lost only one man killed 
and one wounded. President McKinley has left to 
posterity the most wonderful example of humanity 
and consideration for the life of his soldiers of any 
ruler in all history. Nor has God been so unmindful 
of his act as to fail of a great man to record and pre- 
serve it. After the victories of Manila Bay and San 
Diego Harbor, where war was yet in progress and 
other victories in sight, President McKinley solemnly 
asked the prayers of the nation for peace. Arch- 
bishop Ireland's grand oration, "Peace in the Wake 
of Victory," will endure as long as the United States 
endure. I quote a few of the opening lines of the 
oration : 

"By solemn proclamation the President of the 
United States has invited citizens to assemble today 
in their churches to thank God for victories obtained 
by the army and navy of the United States, and to 
pray that peace be speedily restored to the nations at 
present engaged in deadly warfare. It is a grand 
fact which all Christians should delight in taking 
cognizance of, that in the midst of the war in which 
the country has been engaged, the Chief Magistrate 
of the nation should request the people of America to 
pause and to acknowledge that, above armies and 
navies, there is a Supreme Power holding in His 



WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 69 

hand the destinies of nations and disposing of those 
nations for his own designs, even beyond the power 
and valor of their armies and their navies. 

The spectacle which America offers today to the 
world bowing the head to the Almighty, in sublime; 
those of her citizens to whom religion is dear must 
rejoice that his solemn recognition of God is given 
by this great nation. A spectacle such as this hon- 
ors America far more than the prowess of armies, 
and gives hope that in the future, as in the present, 
America shall be, God willing, a great, a powerful, 
a prosperous nation." 



WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 71 

THE ARMY OF PRAYER FOR VICTORY. 
A PROCLAMATION. 

Whereas, The Congress of the United States on 
the second day of April last passed the following 
resolution : 

Resolved, By the Senate (the House of Represen- 
tatives concurring), That it being a duty peculiarly 
incumbent in a time of war, humbly and devoutly 
to acknowledge our dependence on Almighty God, 
and to implore His aid and protection, the President 
of the United States be and he is hereby respectfully 
requested to recommend a day of public humiliation, 
prayer and fasting, to be observed by the people of 
the United States with religious solemnity and the 
offering of fervent supplications to Almighty God 
for the safety and welfare of our cause ; His blessing 
on our arms, and a speedy restoration of an honorable 
and lasting peace to the nations of the earth. 

And whereas, It has always been the recent habit 
of the people of the United States to turn in humble 
appeal to Almighty God for His guidance in the 
affairs of their common life; 

Now, therefore, I, Woodrow Wilson, President of 
the United States of America, do hereby proclaim 
Thursday, the thirtieth day of May a day already 
freighted with sacred and stimulating memories, a 
day of public humiliation, prayer and fasting and to 



72 WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 

exhort my fellow-citizens of all faiths and creeds to 
assemble on that day in their several places and wor- 
ship, there, as well as in their homes, to pray Al- 
mighty God that He may forgive our sins and short- 
comings as a people and purify our hearts, to see 
and love the truth, to accept and defend all things 
that are just and right, and to propose only those 
righteous acts and judgments which are in conform- 
ity with His will ; beseeching Him that He will give 
victory to our armies as they fight for freedom, wis- 
dom to those who take counsel on our behalf in these 
days of dark struggle and perplexity, and steadfast- 
ness to our people to make sacrifice to the utmost 
in support of what is just and true, bringing us at 
last the peace in which men's hearts can be at rest 
because it is founded upon mercy, justice and good- 
will. 

In witness thereof, I have hereunto set my hand 
and caused the seal of the United States to be 
affixed. 

Done in the District of Columbia, this eleventh 
day of May, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred 
and eighteen, and of the independence of the United 
States the one hundred and forty-second. 

Woodrow Wilson. 
By the President: 

Robert Lansing, Secretary of State. 

This proclamation is the most spiritual utterance 
ever made by an American President. The appeal 



WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 73 

for prayer is in line with the heroic faith of military 
conquerors in every age of which history has made 
a record ; his appeal for fasting in the spirit of repar- 
ation to God for the sins and negligences of the 
nation is sublimely Christian, representative of a 
God-fearing people, and prophetic of victory. 

When Divine Providence appoints unto a nation 
rulers like Washington, Lincoln, and Woodrow Wil- 
son, the battle is already won, provided the people 
of that nation prove themselves worthy of so great 
a favor. Mr. Wilson has done his part, nobly, wisely, 
"in the fear of the Lord." Oh! that our response 
to his appeal for prayer might be commensurate with 
the response which the nation has already made in 
money and men. 

Prayer is a national asset for victory that should 
and can be utilized as have been other assets on a 
colossal scale. Let us answer our great Congress 
and President not only with one day of prayer, but 
with every day until the world war has been decided 
as God wills. 

Let no army of ten, nay of twenty millions united 
in spirit, as the nation is united in mind and heart, 
to win this war with God by the aid of God and for 
God's greater glory in civil government. 

Such prayers would be to all future generations 
a shining record of faith of an always victorious 
nation, and would go far to establish in international 
confidence our alliance with God for national ideals 



74 WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 

of peace, disarmament, and the self-determination 
of nations. 

The army of prayer knows no word but victory 
while our armies are in battle array, it understands 
but one word in the language of our enemies and 
that word is surrender. 

It presents the will of our congress and President 
and asks God to fulfill that will. 

It confidently places our banner at the feet of the 
God of nations, looks to him for aid and abettment 
of our military programme abides His decision in a 
spirit of docility, while accepting every responsibility, 
being loyal to every obligation, and making every 
sacrifice necessary to the complete supremacy of our 
forces on sea and land and in the air. 

Prayer is essentially a prerogative of the State, 
an arm of government for defense and security, not 
supplanting but auxiliary to other departments of 
the government. It is not all of military victory, 
only a necessary part, holding well within its limita- 
tions. 

Joan of Arc upon being questioned as to why she 
needed an army if God was with her by inspiration 
and promise, replied "God helps those who help 
themselves. " The soldiers of France will fight the 
battles, but God will give the victory. 

Prayer is not a question of Church affiliation; 
men prayed before the days of Christianity and prior 
to the dispensation of Moses. The American Indian's 
appeal to the Great Spirit is as much his prerogative 
as is the illumined prayer of a Thomas Acquinis. 



WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 75 

Cardinal Gibons says : "As the world has never yet 
beheld and never will behold, a nation of atheists, so 
will the Sun never shine on a Nation that does not 
worship God, and prayer is an essential element of 
divine worship. No people have ever existed, whether 
ancient or modern, savage or civilized, Jew or Gen- 
tile, Pagan or Christian, that have not poured forth 
supplication to the Diety . . . the language of 
Homer represents the sentiments of all ancient 
heathen writers: 

"The Gods (the only great, and only wise) 
Are moved by offerings, vows and sacrifices ; 
Offending man their high compassion wins, 
And daily prayers atone for daily sins." 

There should be no relaxation of spiritual vigilance 
until the war has actually been won, until pestilence, 
famine and Bolshevikism have been conquered. As the 
necessities of armies are of daily recurrence, so should 
prayer be continuous and persistent. The prayer of 
Moses at the Red Sea was not effectual to conquer 
Amalec. His prayer for his food supplies was not 
sufficient to overcome the sickness of the camps. The 
moment of preliminary victories, is not the time to 
forget God. 

There is a close relationship between official prayer 
and military success. It was the King Hezekiah 
rather than the great prophet Isaiah who went up 
into the Temple to pray for national security against 
the Army of Senncharib. The prophet indeed prayed 



76 WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 

but not until he had been officially requested to do 
so. I have observed in these historical readings that 
even when military victory has been attributed, as is 
often the case, to the prayers of Holy men and wo- 
men, those prayers have been requested by the Rulers 
of the Nation or the leaders of the army. Jeremiah 
could not for all his fasting and prayers save his 
country against the will of its civil rulers, Christ did 
not save Jerusalem over the official protest of its 
Kings. 

War being a powerful governmental act, every- 
thing that pertains to it must be official and prayer 
for the prosperity of that war must not be relegated 
the act of private individuals. 

As to the necessity of prayer in cooperation with 
scientific military action, it seems to be concerned 
in some way with spiritual forces, both good and evil, 
operating on the field of battle. No one who believes 
in the Bible has failed to observe the tremendous part 
played by angels and demons in the Biblical Wars. 
Saint John's vision, even if it has no reference to this 
war reveals the certainty of diabolism in war and 
pestilence. 

The Cardinal in our Christian Heritage has two 
wonderful Chapters on Prayer, which answer many 
questions of the Soul, I wish I might quote them in 
full, but here are a few extracts : "When a Christian, 
therefore, addresses to God a prayer, it must not be 
imagined that this prayer has just come to the know- 
ledge of God. He has already heard it from all eter- 



WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 77 

nity and if he has judged it worthy of being granted, 
he has arranged the world expressly in favor of this 
prayer, so that its accomplishment might be the suc- 
cession of the regular course of events. Now, to ap- 
ply these principles: From all eternity God decreed 
that Joshua and his hosts should conquer the Amale- 
kites in answer to the prayer of his servant Moses . . 
The dawn of creation, the present moment and the 
day of judgment are all instantaneous with God. 
Though in point of execution, my prayer is posterior 
to God's absolute decree, yet before God it is anterior 
to them . . . They who invoke the immunability of 
God's universal laws lose sight of the great law of 
prayer itself ; they forget that prayer holds a conspic- 
ious place in the harmony of creation, that it is a 
powerful leaven in shaping and moulding human 
events and an essential element and actor in framing 
his eternal decrees." 

An army of prayer for victory would energize every 
other department of military preparedness. Labor 
registered for prayer would not strike; capital would 
have a new and beautiful consecration to God as well 
as to country, and how would our soldiers in France 
be heartened and our sailors encouraged if they real- 
ized that ten or twenty or thirty millions of the 
strong men and women of the nation pray daily for 
victory to their arms and the conservation of their 
lives. The Eed Cross, whether at home or abroad, 
would experience a sudden uplift, and ease and suc- 
cess in their work undreamed of and unhoped for. 



78 WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 

Our surgeons would realize that answered prayer is 
the most powerful aid science can have. Our chap- 
lains would thank God for conversions as in the days 
of the Apostles; our President and his counselors 
would feel and know a security against assassins, 
profiteers, and traitors, impossible without the direct 
superintendence of the Almighty. 

God has but to turn His all-seeing eye upon the 
nation, and lo! as in a white searchlight, spies and 
all enemies of the government would be revealed. In- 
deed the army of prayer will be a roll call of loyalty ; 
any man or woman who registers by prayer may 
be absolutely relied upon to answer every other call 
made upon him by his country. And how would an 
army of thirty millions praying for victory amaze the 
worshipers of the Kaiser, they who now claim a mono- 
poly of God's favor. 

Eeligious fanaticism, coupled with military despo- 
tism, is the secret of the power of the German Em- 
peror. It was Mahomet's secret, and that of the 
Assyrian despots. As the spiritual head of the Ger- 
man church, the Kaiser's voice is to the German peo- 
ple as the voice of God's vice-regent, and it is a voice 
for war until every male citizen of the Empire has 
been sacrificed to his insane delusion. A German 
victory would mean the Kaiser as supreme spiritual 
dictator of his conquered dependencies, and the great 
est religious persecution the world has ever known 
would follow. Even with partial victory in the East, 
this persecution has begun against the Jews. Com- 



WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 79 

plete victory would see the spread of persecution to 
every other religious denomination that refused alle- 
gience to the spiritual rulership of this man. 

We can match the armies of the Kaiser with greater 
armies, his fleets with greater fleets ; where he sinks 
one ship, we can replace it with ten ; where he spends 
one billion of dollars for war, we can expend twenty 
billions and not miss it; but against the malignant 
agencies of Hell we have not hitherto organized; 
prayers for the protection of individual men on the 
battlefront are being offered daily by the mothers of 
the nation, and everywhere prayers are being offered 
for victory ; but as the individual soldier is rendered 
almost helpless without organization, so too, the or- 
ganization of those who pray for national victory 
would be rendered a thousand-fold more effective. 
Prayer for victory is always a prayer for the conser- 
vation of the lives of our fighting men. 

Material warfare, where the reliance is solely upon 
material means, may drag its weary length for years ; 
God's decisions are instantaneous; one moment the 
blackness of war, the roar of battle; the next, deci- 
sion, victory for one side or the other, and the rising 
sun of peace and prosperity. 

Prayer adapts itself to all times, conditions and 
employments. It interferes with no other business; 
it may be but a moment's uplift of the soul to God 
while marching to battle; it may be forty days and 
forty nights of sustained supplication in convent or 
monastery. 



80 WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 

General Pershing, from the battlefront, has several 
times publicly asked for the prayers of the women 
of the country ; our President now asks for the pray- 
ers of the whole nation. 

When the Titanic struck in midocean a blind, un- 
reasoning force of material nature, she called for aid, 
and the Carpathia answered in these immortal words : 
"Coming with all possible speed." 

So have we answered civilization, struck by the 
blind, unreasoning forces of German materialism, 
"Coming with all possible speed." So be it — let us 
come with food and ammunition and money and ships 
and men, but above all these let us hasten in the 
power and spirit of the Lord God of Victory. 

We were not prepared for this war as were our 
enemies, but with the help of God we can be mightily 
prepared for thanksgiving to the Lord of Hosts when 
victory has been won. 

May 30th, 1918. 



WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 81 



PRAYER OF THE POPE FOR PEACE. 

In the starry spacing of infinitude battalions of 
prayer are speeding Heaven's highway, to be re- 
hearsed by the angel of civilization before the throne 
of Omnipotence. Among them the prayer of the 
Pope for peace, and the prayer of the ruler of the 
United States for military victory. Do these two 
conflict ? They seem to me to be but different parts 
of the same great prayer and purpose. The Pope 
looks upon the prostrate form of humanity, its jugu- 
lar vein cut, its life blood inundating the earth, and 
he with the heart of a mother and the interest of a 
physician, pleads with God for the life of the wound- 
ed one. Our President sees, like the Pope, the un- 
speakable woes of humanity, but has fixed the crime 
of the wounding on one deadly assassin and has re- 
solved to wrench from his hand the murderous dag- 
ger, to release the throat of humanity from the claws 
of the Kaiser and his accomplices. The one uses 
sacrifice and prayer as the means appointed by God 
unto his priesthood; the other sets about to accom- 
plish peace by means appointed unto nations. 

There are a few men, and they are not openly of 
the German propaganda, who pretend to see in the 
prayers of the Pope for peace a vague, subtle, en- 
tirely unwordable antagonism to the military efforts 
of the Allies to bring the war to an end. These people 
are not aware of the nature of prayer, which does 



82 WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 

not dictate to the Almighty the time, place or means 
of bringing about the desired end. These individuals 
fear what they are pleased to term a premature peace. 
There is no such thing as prematurity with God. He 
strikes the iron anvil of destiny at the right moment, 
in the right way, and as it suits His Omnipotent will. 
To fear a premature peace by prayer is like fearing 
the premature rising of the sun. Neither is the 
prayer of the Pope for peace, as some seem to think, 
a judicial decision, releasing the German militarists 
from the obligation of restitution and reparation to 
wronged nations. Prayer refers the offenders in this 
war to the supreme court of Heaven, relying upon 
the words of Scripture, "Vengeance is mine, saith 
the Lord, I will repay." 

The world seems to have forgotten the wrath of 
God, its swift and sure justice; they fail to realize 
with David, "The Lord upon thy right hand hath 
overthrown kings in the day of His wrath." "He 
shall be judge among the nations, He shall smite 
asunder the heads of many in the land." 

Nor does the Pope deny that the Almighty may, if 
he pleases, utilize the armies of the United States. 
God makes use of armies consciously or unconscious- 
ly to their leaders, as it fits His purpose. When 
Sennacharib boasted of his mighty conquests, the 
prophet Isaiah told him that his successes were not 
in any way due to his wisdom or valor, but they had 
been ordained by the Almighty as a punishment for 
the sins of the nations destroyed. The Bible says 



WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 83 

there are spirits created for vengeance; "moreover, 
death and bloodshed, strife and sword, oppressions, 
famine and afflictions, and scourges, all these things 
are created for the wicked, and for their sake came 
the flood." 

When the time came for the pride and blasphemy 
of Sennacharib to be rebuked lo! the pestilence; 
when David was tempted to trust in his "horses and 
chariots" rather than in the Lord, and numbered his 
people in a spirit of pride and vanity, again the pes- 
tilence, nor did it abate until David repented, prayed 
and fasted. It is noted by theologians that when 
people are allowed to suffer for the crimes and blun- 
ders of their rulers, it is because they have flattered 
those blunders and acquiesced in their crimes. Such 
has been the unfortunate servility of the German 
people to their insane ruler, and such the humiliat- 
ing acquiescence in Prussian brutality, perfidy and 
dishonor of Austria. 

The Pope's prayer for peace is an appeal for the 
Divine decision ; it asks not for a German peace, nor 
an English peace, nor a French peace — but God's 
peace; and there is no other, all else is snare and 
delusion, like the promises of The Hague that ended 
in the world's war. 

The position which the Pope has taken for peace 
is impregnable and is a bulwark to the Allies, since 
it is the absolute condemnation of Prussian militar- 
ism. If he has gone a little ahead of the Allies to 
plant the banner of peace upon the hills "whence com- 



84 WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 

eth victory," blame him not, the spiritual must lead 
the way. "God helping, he can do no other." 

The hope of the Pope for peace is an inspiration 
to our soldiers. The fury of battle is in proportion 
to the promise of speedy victory. Von Moltke ad- 
mitted that the value of war to a nation lay in its 
shortness. If the Pope were to despair of peace and 
die of frustrated hope, the world would find itself 
expectant of the final catastrophe. His adamantine 
firmness for peace, when all the world is in the mael- 
strom of war, is one of the marvels of the crisis, and 
offers sure confidence to the Allies that their noble 
striving for a lasting peace is practicable and timely. 
It is an indication that civilization, being resolved 
of its own free will to rid itself of the monster war, 
God will lend a hand to the establishment of an in- 
ternational code of law and judiciary, preliminary to 
the reign of law. The Pope's attitude toward peace 
may be likened to a clock by which the world may 
time civilization's hour of deliverance from military 
autocracy. The peace suggestions of the Pope, and 
he has never intended them to be other than sugges- 
tions, are so similar to the peace terms of our Presi- 
dent as to indicate the same source of inspiration. 
The terms of our President gain immensely by their 
agreement with the Pope ; it is as if the moral forces 
of the universe had been mobilized in favor of the 
United States. The Pope's position is unusual, in 
that he is the spiritual father of millions of children 
whose civil rulers are outside the pale of his jurisdic- 



WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 85 

tion. That accounts for the fact that he is more in 
sympathy with the common people than he is with 
kings. He is, perhaps, today the truest democrat in 
the world. The reason he has suggested that terri- 
torial questions be referred to an international legal 
tribunal is that he has a living faith in the common 
people. It may be that he thinks that if the iron 
hand of military despotism is lifted from the German 
people, they will become the avenger of the millions 
of German citizens slain to gratify the personal am- 
bition of their ruler for thrones for his sons and rela- 
tives. There are many observers who believe that 
the Kaiser's continuance of a hopeless war is for 
the sinister purpose of killing off so many men of his 
nation that there will not be enough left alive to get 
up a revolution. Kings have not only to account to 
God for the lives of their subjects; they must also 
render an account to the state. 

The Kaiser is not afraid of the wan women of his 
land, who must henceforth grope through awful si- 
lences to suns forever set and dreadful starless 
nights. He knows how to comfort their empty 
hearts, how to satisfy their maiden longings; he re- 
cently sent his photograph (as all sufficient) to a 
German mother who had lost nine sons in battle. 

In the beginning of this war our President struck 
the high orchestral keynote of a peace march such as 
the world had not heard before. He declared that 
the United States would never again take over terri- 
tory and its peoples by force of arms. Eliminate 



86 WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 

territory, as human slavery, concubinage and private 
property have been eliminated from the legitimate 
spoils of war, and what is there left for kings to war 
about, except their personal vanity and pride in win- 
ning the game. The Pope sanctioned and blessed 
this proclamation of our President by perfect accord 
and agreement, which was expressed in his sugges- 
tion to the belligerent rulers to refer questions of 
territorial import to an international tribunal of 
legal justice. There are many who have said this 
suggestion of the Pope was in the interest of Ger- 
many; rather is it a powerful condemnation of Ger- 
many's seizure by force of arms of alien territory. 
The Pope has a territorial grievance ; his estates have 
been taken by force of arms and held by right of mili- 
tary conquest, yet he has never asked of his three 
hundred million children that they shed one drop of 
blood for the restoration of his property, nor, as far 
as I have observed, has he publicly prayed or asked 
anyone else to pray for the return of the papal es- 
tates. I think if one could look into his great, hu- 
manitarian heart they would find that he holds a 
single human life of more value than all the land of 
Europe. Did not Jesus Christ, too, have a terri- 
torial grievance? He was the lawful king of Judea, 
His title acknewledged by the Roman government, 
he had it in His power to raise an army both celestial 
and terrestial, and restore His family the official 
throne of David, but He willed not that blood be 
shed for territorial adjustments, and so He said to 



WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 87 

St. Peter: "Put up thy sword into its place." Con- 
trast the Pope's spirit of respect for human life with 
the ruthless and wanton disrespect of the Kaiser. 
The German Emperor has bartered millions of muti- 
lated German corpses for corner lots and factory 
sites. The coin of his realm is blood-red human coin, 
two million dead sons of the fatherland for Belgium 
building blocks; a million bleaching skeletons for 
Russian wheat fields; a cool million for iron ore in 
France — what does he care for human life, whether 
foe or friend it has no value whatever to him, save as 
legal tender for territorial aggrandizement. 

That the Pope should seem to anyone to be pro- 
German is strange perversity. German rationalism, 
recently translated into terms of war, has been for 
centuries in fierce opposition and hostile attack of 
the Catholic church, and particularly concentrated 
on the papacy, until diverted by war to the fair 
fields of financial prosperity. It must be remem- 
bered that if the Kaiser is not actually anti-Christ, 
he is anti-Pope, in denial of Benedict's claim to uni- 
versality and covetous of every papal privilege ex- 
cept its limitations. The Kaiser is an ecclesiastic, 
the official head of the United Church of Prussia. 
The royal family and most of the Prussian militarists 
are members of this church. 

The peace suggestions of the Pope, strange to say, 
were coldly received by all rulers of the earth except 
Mr. Wilson and the Emperor of Austria, but the com- 
mon people understand him. When he has stooped 



88 WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 

with Christ-like sympathy to little children, heirs 
apparent to orphanage and woe, and bade them pray 
with him for their soldier fathers, millions of inno- 
cent hands have been clasped and millions of baby 
lips repeated with him, "God save my daddy." When 
he has harkened to the voice of English mothers call- 
ing to the sobbing seas to give back their dead, they 
have understood his gentle persuasion for them to 
pray with him for the lives of their yet remaining 
sons. As the mothers of the Machabees appealed to 
Judas, the high priest, women of the whole world 
have appealed to him. In his last appeal to Heaven 
for a cessation of human slaughter, there is a note of 
fear — the fear of the Lord. If the blood of one man, 
Abel, cried from the earth for Divine vengeance — 
what is the awful appeal of ten million Russians dead 
on the battlefield, fourteen million Poles gone to early 
graves, and all the brave young lives of the nations at 
war? 

It is not contrary to God's way in history to wipe 
out entire generations and to begin all over again 
with one man and his family, as he did with Noah 
after the flood. At one time the Hebrew nation (all 
that it was then and afterward) was threatened with 
extinction. Said the Lord to Moses : "How long will 
this people detract Me, how long will they not believe 
Me for all the signs I have wrought before them? 
I will strike them, therefore, with pestilence and will 
consume them, and of thee I will make a ruler over 
a great nation and a mightier than this." The self- 
less prayer of Moses prevented this catastrophe. 



WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 89 

Recently the Pope issued the call authoritative to 
the priests of his church in behalf of his heart's de- 
sire for peace: 

"And now we find ourselves in a condition which 
recalls that of Josaphat who, when encompassed and 
borne down by sorrows, cried out: 'O Lord God of 
our fathers, thou art God in heaven and rulest over 
the kingdom and nations; in Thy hand is strength 
and power and no one can resist Thee. We will cry 
out to Thee in our afflictions and Thou wilt hear and 
save us.' O Lord, in this hour of our utter abandon- 
ment, not knowing what to do, we can only turn our 
eyes to Thee and put ourselves in Thy hands." * * * 

"And first of all the anger of God, incensed by 
so much stubborn obstinacy and by so many crimes, 
must be placated. To this end humble and suppliant 
prayer, if confidently persevered in, will largely con- 
tribute, but the holy sacrifice of the mass, in which 
He, who gave Himself for the redemption of all, and 
who is ever living and making intercession for us, 
offers Himself as heavenly bread, will be still more 
efficacious in propitiating the divine clemency. * * * 

"What necessity can be more imperative than that 
which concerns the reign of tranquillity and true 
brotherhood among peoples? Hence, it seems that 
the present is an opportune time to invite all pastors 
to unite in celebrating simultaneously with us, sol- 
emnly and confidently, the holy sacrifice of the mass. 

"Therefore we command all priests to celebrate for 
the people on the 29th of June next, the feast of holy 



90 WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 

Saints Peter and Paul, the helpers and defenders of 
Christians, and to offer the holy sacrifice according 
to our intention as indicated above. Hence, all 
Catholic priests will regard it as a duty to unite with 
the Roman pontiff in this altogether doing violence 
to the heart of God. In so doing we shall the more 
confidently hope that the wish of David may be speed- 
ily verified and that all peoples may give to one an- 
other the kiss of justice and peace." 

This official act of the Pope is the mightiest con- 
certed appeal ever made by human beings to heaven 
for peace. Compared with its efficiency the prayer of 
Moses seems like the lispings of a little child. 

In every city of the entire world wherever a chris- 
tian church rears its steeple, the invocation, nay more, 
the evocation of Deity has been accomplished. A 
great voice from the temple has been heard through- 
out the world ; the prisoner of the Vatican may not 
have an army at his beck and call like the Emperor — 
Pope, but obedient to his necessity the splendid 
army of the press bore his message as on wings of 
light to the inhabitants of the globe. 

Have the Allies anything to fear from God's en- 
trance into the arena of war ? Following close upon 
this solemn act of worship came the first substantial 
and continued victories to the Allied armies under 
the supreme command of Marshal Foch who is not 
only the greatest military scientist of the world but 
is also a man of profound faith and piety. Before 
the battle of the Marne (to quote the war news bul- 



WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 91 

letin of London) "General Foch said to one of his 
chaplins), Father, we are to make our supreme effort 
in arms tomorrow do you also make a supreme effort 
in prayer. All my trust is in God." 

A concident of the recent military successes is that 
a relative of General Haig, a brother of General 
Mangin and a brother of Field Marshal Foch, all 
members of religious orders, were celebrants of 
masses ordered by the Pope for the return to the 
earth of the spirit of the brotherhood of man. I do 
not personally doubt that these priest-brothers of 
the great Allied commanders interested their power- 
ful religious organizations to pray for Allied victory. 
Within cloistered walls, where the glare of day is 
shut out, that finer essences may be more visible, the 
flame of patriotism glows pure and holy. I presume 
all of the convents in the United States have prayed 
incessantly for the supremacy of the United States 
since the first call to war. I personally know that 
at St. Cecelia, Nashville, Tenn., at the Carmelite 
Monastery, New Orleans, at the Visitation Monas- 
tery, Wilmington, Del., at Mt. Dechantal, Wheeling, 
W. Va., and at Notre Dame Convent, Chattanooga, 
Tenn., more than twenty-five patriotic novenas of 
masses and communions have been offered, and since 
the President's appeal for prayers for victory the 
New Orleans Carmelites have been praying for vic- 
tory night and DAY. 



92 WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 

Our Lady of Gethsemane, 

Gethsemane, Ky. 

Trappist P. O., Ky., June 28, 1918. 
Mrs. M. B. Littleton, 

Chattanooga, Tenn. 

Dear Madam: — 

Your welcome letter of .the 23rd instant and your pamphlet 
came to hand this morning, for all of which I thank you 
sincerely. 

Certainly this project of "An Army of Prayer to God for 
Victory" is a most laudable one, and it seems to me to be 
most needed. For the Lord of Armies is the only one who 
can give victory, and He is the only one Who can put a stop 
to this awful war. Most gladly then shall we become soldiers 
in this army, which takes God into consideration and looks 
for its success from Him. 

Sincerely wishing you every blessing in this enterprise, I 
am 

Yours faithfully in Christ, 

Edmond M. Obrecht 
Abbot. 

It is worthy of note that the prayers of the Pope 
have not been for the conversion of suffering people 
to the Catholic faith ; he seems to have forgotten sec- 
tarian differences in the awful human necessities of 
the moment. With him there is neither Jew nor 
Gentile, Protestant nor Catholic, all are his brothers 
and sisters, and he is asking God that the hand of 
death be staid and that they be given innocent hu- 
man joys and earthly happiness. 

The glory of military victory belongs to our heroic 
armies and fleets, and no man dare challenge their 



WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 03 

claim to the love and honor and gratitude of hu- 
manity. Have you seen our armies, oh man of God? 
As I look into the faces of our soldier boys marching 
away to the battle fronts of France there come into 
my mind words from the vision of Ezekiel: "When 
they went, they went by four ways ; and they turned 
not where they went, but to the place whither they 
first turned the rest also followed and did not turn 
back ; and the looks of every one to go straight for- 
ward." 

But wherever peace rears her mansions to the blue 
skies of earthly happiness, there the name of Pope 
Benedict will be honored. His name can never be 
disassociated from the word peace. To him the 
Master seems to have personally spoken, "Blessed are 
the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children 
of God." 

Not The Hague, with its abandoned halls and deso- 
lated ranks, but the Vatican has become the peace 
palace of the world. Thither trend the pilgrimages 
of prayer; there converge the hopes of mankind for 
God's assistance in their efforts to uplift and en- 
noble civilization. In its windows a thousand can- 
dles are trimmed and burning for the home-returning 
soldier; from its turrets beacon lights shine far out 
upon the indignant seas and light as with God's re- 
surgent smile the bloody tides of weary battlefields. 

Three times since beginning this chapter I have ac- 
cidentally opened the Bible at this passage : "Behold 
a great priest, who in his days pleased God and in 



94 WHENCE COMETH VICTOKY? 

the time of wrath was made a reconciliation! He 
gave him the blessing of all nations. He preserved 
for him His mercy ; He glorified him in the sight of 
kings." 

Written August, 1918. 



His Eminence James Cardinal 
Gibbons endorses the Army 
of Prayer and enrolls for mem- 
bership. 



WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 97 

MILITARY VICTORY. 

I had not hoped to be able to record so soon the 
coincidence of prayer and military victory in the 
great world war. 

What happened in this war was the unforeseen by 
human judgment, the unexpected, the miracle of 
Divine intervention. By all the laws of materialism 
the Germans were prophetically the masters of the 
world. Their mathematical calculations were correct. 
A subtle and scientific propaganda was theirs which 
undermined the stability of every other country and 
at home left neither man nor woman nor child unin- 
structed in the doctrine of Prussian militarism ; they 
had an army of 10,000,000 imbued with the conviction 
of victory by predestination ; they had allies as sub- 
servient as actual slaves who consented to be officered 
by Germans, and to be guided in all things by the War 
Lords of Prussia. A draft law gave them absolute 
control of every male citizen in the Empire, and 
placed at their disposal all the industries of the land ; 
submarine and air fleet, entirely new as implements 
of war, gave them prospective control of the sea and 
air. They released themselves from all law, — inter- 
national, human and divine — and proposed to win the 
dominance of the world at any expense of human life, 
whether of friend or foe. They timed the war to suit 
themselves; struck the first blow, when they were 
ready, when all other nations were least prepared. 



98 WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 

That which they least took account of in their 
mathematical certainty was the vast, invisible army 
of Prayer for Victory, and its influence with God even 
to the shaping of the trend of destiny in the council 
chambers of omnipotence at the moment of creation. 

To those who gaze with straining eyes and breaking 
hearts upon the flower of manhood, 20,000,000 slain 
in battle and who mournfully question the value of 
Prayer if it did not save the lives of their sons, I ask 
the question : Did you pray with your Civil Govern- 
ment for victory, whose price is human sacrifice, or 
did you pray with the head of Christendom for peace 
whose price is a turning of the heart to God? The 
price of peace has been stated in scriptural terms: 
"God wills not the death of a sinner, but that he may 
be converted and live" ; and again, "A sacrifice to God 
is an humble and contrite heart." Prayer for Victory 
does not promise exemption from casualties, it con- 
serves life by shortening the period of war. 

Justice and gratitude to God's decision in favor of 
the allies' demands that we acknowledge that we 
prayed with our Government for victory ; that we ex- 
pected to pay the price, that we accept our desolation 
believing that our soldiers were martyrs, that they 
gave their lives for civilization, and that we are 
standing not far from the foot of the cross of Him, 
who, too, gave his glorious life for humanity. We are 
not far, at least, in sympathy and understanding 
from the mother of the Sinless One whose heroic grief 
was so silent and uncomplaining that God himself 



WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 99 

voiced it to the world by the lips of His prophet : "Oh 
all ye that pass the way attend and see if there be any 
sorrow like unto my sorrow." 

The appeal of our Congress and President for 
Prayer for Victory met with a response so generous, 
so united, so continuous, as to constitute a vast in- 
visible army whose influence entered into the council 
chambers of our rulers, accompanied our transports 
and armies, encamped on the hills of France with 
presentiments of victory. 

Among the Novenas of masses and communions 
offered by holy women in the convents throughout the 
United States was one that implored God to give to 
President Wilson for service during the war "the 
more than twelve legations of angels which Christ de- 
clined to use for Himself but which he gave us to 
understand were armed and equipped for service in 
human affairs, if so be it they were asked for in the 
right spirit. 

Following close upon the appeal official of our 
President came the call authoritative of Pope Bene- 
dict to his Hierarchy, for the putting to an end of the 
war by divine intervention. 

Cardinals Gibbons, Farley and O'Connell issued 
their pastoral call, mobilizing the Catholic millions 
"to fight like heroes and to pray like saints." 
Ministers of all other denominations gloriously 
answered the call to prayer until it seemed as 
though a blessed unity of spirit above the hitherto 
warring creeds fulfilled for the moment the command 



100 WHENCE COMETH VICTOKY? 

of Christ: "Be ye one even as the Father and I are 
one." 

The press, too, answered the call spiritual. Great 
dailies gave impressive head lines and generous space 
to prayer announcements, and took account of inci- 
dents such as the praying of young girls and little 
children for the intentions of Field Marshal Foch. 
American and other magazines welcomed every mes- 
senger of prayer from all parts of the world. Canada 
caught the exultant currents of prophetic victory ; the 
Toronto Globe had articles on the subject that might 
have issued from the pulpit. The Eotarians commit- 
ted their splendid organization to daily prayer in a 
resolution that had done credit to ancient crusaders 
in battle array for the rescue of civilization from 
Islam. The Federation of Catholic Men's Clubs re- 
solved themselves into a league of prayer. The 
Daughters of the American Revolution, and many 
other women's organizations were ahead, of even the 
President's appeal, in patriotic prayer. The Mothers 
of the Defenders of Democracy designated themselves 
as an army of prayer, were officially recognized and 
endorsed by Cardinal Gibbons and Mr. Wilson. Of 
the prayers said and asked by the allied Generals in 
France the press has not been silent ; of the soldiers, 
and airmen, and seamen, the chaplains and Red Cross 
workers who prayed, only God may keep the record. 
Among the many individuals who rejoiced when our 
Government, lifted its vision to the hills "whence 
cometh victory," I, among the least, bethought myself 
that if specialists, long experienced in their voca- 
tions, were of eminent service to the Government, 



WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 101 

why not specialists in prayer, which is work, one of 
those good works "without which faith is dead," and 
so I sent a first edition of this booklet to various con- 
vents and monestaries where prayer is studied as a 
science and practiced as a profession. The letters 
which I received in answer were so beautiful, so full 
of patriotism, so appreciative of the necessities of our 
Government, that to publish them were to forever 
establish these institutions in the confudence and 
gratitude of the American people. All of these con- 
vents had, of course, been praying and doing other 
war work from the first call to war, but because they 
are naturally heroic, the idea of an army of prayer 
appealed very strongly to them. One great lady Ab- 
bess organized thirteen Monasteries of her order for 
patriotic prayer until the end of the war. I here give 
a copy of one of these letters : 

Carmel, June 19, 1918. 
Dear Mrs. Littleton : 

You will surely think we have not appreciated your most 
welcome letter, and the precious pamphlet you so thought- 
fully sent us; but it was preciously our deep appreciation 
of both which has helped to delay our letter. 

We have really feasted on the contents of your booklet, and 
approve most strongly of all it contains. We think the very 
Angels in Heaven are rejoicing over your Heaven-inspired 
message to the people of our country, and sincerely wish a 
copy of it could reach every soul in the United States, from 
the President down to the least in the nation. Our great 
country owes you an eternal debt of gratitude, and if your 
timely advice is heeded, God will lift His arm from our 
country, and show it mercy, and grant it peace. 

As far as it lies within our power, we heartily co-operate 
with you. We shall begin the novena in honor of the great 
St. Michael, as you suggested, on Sunday, June 23rd. We 



102 WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 

would gladly have begun it sooner, but wished to let you 
know beforehand, that you may, as we know you wish to 
make it with us. Victory and peace can only come by prayer 
and sacrifice, and until the nation turns to God, as you have 
so intelligently and clearly explained-, He shall continue to 
chastise. 

Gladly shall we send your pamphlet to our Carmels in the 
United States, — (this is not contrary to our holy Rule, but 
rather in accordance with it, considering the cause in ques- 
tion) and beforehand, we can assure you that our dear Sis- 
ters shall all be only too willing to join this "Army of Prayer." 
What a coincidence ! You wrote your last letter on the feast 
of Our Holy Father St. Elias, July 20th. His great motto, 
and that of all Carmelites is : "With zeal have I been zealous 
for the Lord of Hosts." And how 1 zealously shall we, armed 
with the weapons of prayer and sacrifice, strive to fight 
under his leadership, in this, the Cause of our God and 
our Country. If you can let us have about twelve of your 
pamphlets, we shall most willingly send them on their great 
mission, according to your request. 

We can assure you of the fervent prayers of our dear Sis- 
ters in Carmel, and with all Heaven united in prayer with us, 
what may we not expect? Satan, without doubt, is enraged 
against this work, but he can do only what God permits, and 
in the end all his designs shall be foiled, for God is with us, 
and What matters who is against us? 

We are happy to give your good brother-in-law a very 
special place in our prayers, that God may bless all his opera- 
tions, and all those under His care. We continue pleading 
for each of your dear ones, and all whom you wish to recom- 
mend to our prayers, and need hardly add that we pray for 
you always. You are laying the foundation of your enter- 
prise in a very practical manner, and we have every con- 
fidence that God will richly bless it. 

With renewed thanks, and ever-continued prayers, 
Yours devotedly in the Heart of Jesus, 

For Rev. Mother Frioress. 



WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 103 

As to the prayers of Europe, I do not pretend to 
very exhaustive information, but from time to time 
the press recited that the English Government had 
officially called the people of the British Empire to 
prayer for victory, that all of France was on its 
knees, that Italy looked to the Blessed Virgin for aid 
as in the ages of faith; that Cardinal Mercier led 
Belgium in a crusade of prayer, etc., etc. 

Shall all this spiritual splendor "This uttermost 
force of the nation" dissolve and fade from the earth 
while the archives of our nations preserve to poster- 
ity, by registration, the names of draftees and of all 
other war workers? Has not prayer proven itself a 
great, nay, the greatest of all war works? The in- 
visible Army of Prayer I think merits official recog- 
nition by means of a registration that will preserve 
it to future ages. 

The following resolution approved and indorsed by 
Cardinal Gibbons was asked for and prepared for the 
1918 Convention of the Federated Catholic Alumni, 
representing 50,000 women and many distinguished 
prelates and laymen, but owing to the epidemic of in- 
fluenza the Convention had to be postponed, but the 
Cardinal's Indorsement Remains, as a sure hope that 
the suggestion embodied in the resolution may be 
carried to completion by some one of the organiza- 
tions so conspicuously dedicated to prayer during the 
progress of the war. 



104 WHENCE COMETH VICTOKY? 

KESOLUTION. 

Resolved, That, inasmuch as our President and 
Congress have officially appealed to the people of the 
United States for Prayer for Victory ; and inasmuch 
as the response has been so generous as to constitute 
a vast invisible army, that we acclaim this mobiliza- 
tion of the spiritual forces of the nation, and ask that 
its accomplished work be officially remembered as one 
of the essential works of the war. 

Resolved, That this Convention indorse the sug- 
gestion approved by Cardinal Gibbons, to co-ordinate 
all of the units of prayer, somewhat in the way that 
the war workers were co-ordinated into a national 
and visible organization to be known as the Army of 
Prayer. This Convention approves the plan to ask 
Mr. Wilson to appoint a central committee at Wash- 
ington selected from volunteers, both men and women, 
whose duty will be to solicit volunteers from among 
representative clergymen of all denominations with- 
out distinction of creed, and from heads of organiza- 
tions, who have responded to the high call of the soul 
of the nation, to act as volunteer registrars for the 
registration and enrollment of such of their members 
as wish to go on record as having participated in the 
crusade of prayer for victory. This Convention agrees 
that such an organization is a visible expression of 
faith and reliance on Almighty God, and an official 
act of gratitude to Him for favors received, an appre- 
ciation of those who have prayed, who are praying, 
who will continue to pray for the nation ; that it will 



WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 105 

be an unique record by which future generations may 
know of the patriotic part played by prayer in the 
great world war. 

Resolved, That a copy of this resolution, together 
with "Whence Cometh Victory," which is a brief for 
prayer, be sent to President Wilson and to members 
of the House and Senate as an expression of the loyal- 
ty and patriotism of 50,000 women of the convent 
schools of the United States. 

Having received the indorsement of that great 
American patriot, Cardinal Gibbons, I was on my 
way to the White House, confident that the President, 
who has never failed of spiritual vision, would be- 
come personally interested and lend to the work the 
magic of his wonderful personality. Alas ! en route I 
received word that my soldier son was in mortal com- 
bat with the "rider of the pale horse" whose name is 
pestilence. Hastening to the Officers' Artillery Camp 
at Zachary Taylor, I was there met by the Angel of 
the slain, who girded me for the sable sisterhood of 
sorrow and sacrifice, who initiated me into the Mystic 
Order of the Golden Star, and so I send my booklet 
with its program, to whom it may concern, and leave 
to some fitter person the unfinished task of securing 
from our great victorious nation official registration 
and remembrance of those, who failing in no other 
obligation, true to every responsibility, refusing no 
necessary sacrifice, added to these heroic loyalties, 
the higher, surer and greater good of Prayer for 
National Victory. 



106 WHENCE COMETH VICTOEY? 

There is no stimulant like the stimulant of war, 
people think and act with speed and vigor impossible 
in normal times. It may be that there is not now 
sufficient stimulus in the world, now that the war is 
over, to hold the registered army intact and to con- 
tinue its good work for the conquest by medical 
science of pestilence, the conquests of famine by in- 
dustrial co-operation, the conquest of bolshevikism, 
by the infusion of Divine Light and Wisdom into the 
minds of leaders of labor, capital and legislation. 

The appeal of the world to the United States is the 
most pathetic, to me, in all the history of wars. Their 
reliance upon us, their trusts in the sincerity and 
nobility of our purposes, must needs cause us to lift 
our eyes for aid to Heaven. The necessities of Eu- 
rope are greater than human effort and industry can 
relieve. We have need of the miracle and mercy of 
God to fulfill our after-the-war obligation. We should 
hasten to ally our Government with Him who fed the 
multitude by the miraculous multiplication of the 
loaves and fishes. 

Mr. Wilson has proposed to the imagination of men 
the reign of law ; that moral force take the place of 
brute force; that the mental predominate over the 
physical ; that Courts of Justice succeed to camps of 
slaughter and human sacrifice. Such transcendant 
hopes, it seems to me, have need of the continuance 
of the Army of Prayer, for the whole period of recon- 
struction, and I believe with the least assistance from 
the Government, such an Army would respond glori- 



WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 107 

ously. If the influence of prayer was so marked, its 
results so tangible and apparent during war, how 
much greater would its influence be in peace? I be- 
lieve its salutary inspiration would reach to the allied 
councils, that the spirit of Divine Wisdom and 
Moderation would inform the Peace Delegates and 
make itself apparent in the formative principles of 
international law. 

The lifting of the cloud of battle reveals the Egyp- 
tian darkness of woe and misery unequaled in the 
annals of war. 

The tragedy of the high cost of living, if not dealt 
with as an evil of deadly disaster, will cause more 
suffering right here in the United States than the 
influenza, which we long regarded as of European 
concern. Famine abroad is a reality of staggering 
horror. The demand on us for food is immediate and 
insistant ; the laws of nature do not provide sufficient 
food for one nation to feed the entire world, and in 
our generosity, with profiteers in charge of the food 
supply, we are in grave danger of forgetting the little 
children, old people and invalids at home, who easily 
succumb to under nourishment. 

The war is over, but not the causes that led to the 
war nor its awful consequences. It was the Duke of 
Wellington, after the battle of Waterloo, who said 
"that next to a battle lost, the most melancholy 
thing in the world was a battle won." 

This war has interpreted many passages in scrip- 
ture not before fully understood, among them the dia- 



108 WHENCE COMETH VICTOEY? 

bolism present in all wars, and the three-fold char- 
acter of war as symbolized in the scriptural pen pic- 
ture of the three riders, of the red horse which is war, 
of the black horse which is famine, of the pale horse 
which is pestilence ; all of these unconquerable except 
to the rider of the white horse which is Christ our 
Lord. 

When Christ was on earth he told His apostles that 
not even the angels of heaven knew the time of the 
end of the world, may it not be that great events are 
determined by God, but that the time is not affixed, 
irrevocable moment, but will be more or less influen- 
ced by the people of the world. Saints relate that the 
coming of Christ was delayed many centuries by the 
sins of some of His human ancestors, and that His 
birth was hastened by the merits and prayers of His 
blessed mother. 

St. John describes an event to which humanity 
looks forward with longing vision "And I saw an 
angel coming down from heaven, having the key of 
the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. And 
he laid hold on the dragon, the old serpent, which is 
the devil and satan and bound him for a thousand 
years. And he cast him into the bottomless pit. and 
shut him up, and set a seal upon him that he should 
no more seduce the nations, till the thousand years be 
finished. After that he must be loosed a little time." 

If the name of this demon might be interpreted by 
modern events, he would be known as THE DEVIL 
OF MISUNDERSTANDING. Might not the contin- 

LbD 



WHENCE COMETH VICTORY? 109 

uance of the national Army of Prayer for civic en- 
lightenment and divine co-operation in government 
lend itself to this prophesy and hasten the coming 
of the thousand years of peace? 



LB D '19 



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